Hacker News Reader

Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Comments here so far seem oddly dismissive of the article ("what's the point", "entitled millenial", "jealous", "click-bait").

But they're missing the larger critical points which are very newsworthy:

- The author almost injured themselves with an overly heavy box because Amazon didn't provide them with a dolly, warn them they needed one, and if they did injure themselves the medical bills are their own

- Amazon is asking them to deliver packages where parking without getting a ticket is a logistical impossibility and risk making negative $ for the day due to tickets

- These kinds of safety and minimum wage regulations which have been hard-won over the past decades are being completely avoided by Amazon by (possibly wrongly/illegally) classifying them as independent contractors, which seems to be a scandal that laws/regulations ought to fix, but compulsory arbitration may be preventing class-action lawsuits which would otherwise correct the situation

View on HN

Many HNers may lack self-awareness of their own privileged situation, working in a field where employees are often showered with benefits unthinkable in most other professions.

I've always been puzzled by this; Nobody seems to care about Joe average. Even worse is that saying that you are "disrupting" Joe average's world / life is regarded as a good thing. All these ideas to disrupt all seem to have in common that they are a race to the bottom for average Joe.

While some markets need to be torn open it's always done with a total disregard for the average Joe's who are caught in the crossfire and are paying the price for it.

If someone can disrupt a market that Joe's working in and provide the same (or better) service cheaper, why on Earth does he have an obligation to think about said Joe? That just sounds like a Copenhagen principle of moral entanglement to me.

Because he's a person. Because she has problems. Because he has a family. Because that's my friend and uncle and neighbor. What on Earth do you mean "why do we have to care about them?" Because they're real.

I get where you're coming from about the exasperatingly impossible web of moral obligations, but you can't give up.

This, a million times.

> Because he's a person. Because she has problems. Because he has a family.

That's just appeal to empathy - any human has it, until he's a sociopath, but like any other basic instinct, it's human nature to reign over it and not let it run your life.

> Because he has a family. Because that's my friend and uncle and neighbor.

Most likely he's not - there are very few people who I (or you) would actually call family and care about in the way you care about family. This Joe is most likely just an anonymous person that you don't know or care about.

> I get where you're coming from about the exasperatingly impossible web of moral obligations, but you can't give up.

I can't give up something that I didn't put on myself first.

>If someone can disrupt a market that Joe's working in and provide the same (or better) service cheaper, why on Earth does he have an obligation to think about said Joe?

Because the next wave of innovation might send them and their market out to sea.

You can already see some of that attitude change on here when it comes to H1B visas and offshoring.

It will happen with automation too.

We've just seen the first phase of the Industrial Revolution with the automating of physical labor, and the automation of mental labor is still in its infancy, but the obsolescence of the "knowledge worker" is coming.

Yes, it might indeed. But what's the actual causal connection here? Do you suppose that if the current disruptors go and create a socialist utopia for the current disrupted, the same welfare net will be there for them to fall upon, too? I don't find it very likely, to say the least.

If its cheaper because you found some way to circumvent labour laws and pit all the Joe average's against each other in a race to the bottom (like most of the "sharing economy" disruption does): Because it does not make the world a better place.

I mean should my window cleaning really be 5 bucks cheaper if that means the guy/gal doing it is not insured if he/she falls of the ladder and can never work again? If you let people choose to take those kinds of risk there will always be some people doing it. Undercutting the people who don't want to take these risk but get forced because they need to be competitive.

That's why we had those kind of labour laws in the first place. Because we thought while being allowed to compete everyone should have certain basic rights which should never be compromised.

You also have this laws in part because there was a USSR. Average Joe could turn into communist if his life was too miserable.

> Because it does not make the world a better place.

This is a very high level of abstraction. Making the world a better place is sometimes interesting and to me, and sometimes it's something that I (or you) would be completely indifferent to. Unless you're from a Coke commercial or a hippy commune, "making the world a better place" is not really what you're after.

Now, how are all these things that you mentioned actually relevant to your or me?

> Now, how are all these things that you mentioned actually relevant to your or me?

Well that depends on the kind of person you are. To stay with my earlier example; I personally like the person who cleans my windows to not have to go live under a bridge if that person falls off the ladder and never being able to work again. All because my window cleaning had to be a bit cheaper.

So if its relevant for you is a matter of personal taste.

Apply this logic to granting unlimited work visas (like H1Bs and green cards) for non-Americans and see how many of the same people with the same argument immediately change their tack.

I don't see it. In both cases, you've got "these people" (I guess you mean conservative americans, why didn't you say so, by the way) simply ask, how is it relevant to them and their self-interest. It's the same logic.

Which is all true though would hardly describe the average SV employee as "showered" with benefits when compared to the average European employee.

Compared to the UK:

      Pensions suck 

      Tax treatment of options suck 

      You Don't have "any" statutory leave and much less AL period.

      Sick pay is non existent a good professional employer will offer > 6 months on full pay

Sure. I'm Finnish myself but the same holds here in that IT companies often offer benefits way above and beyond what's mandated by law and collective agreements. And even here gig economy and labor-hire workers are a growing segment of the working populace and lack many if not most of the benefits and protections guaranteed to regular employees. Traditional union-backed left hasn't been particularly interested in the matters of the "precariat" either.

By and large white collar workers view every job as coming with a 401(k), healthcare, and a host of fringe benefits, because every job they’ve had in their professional lives had those things.

Does working in tech have benefits? Sure. That's why so many people are hungry to get into the field by any means possible.

Are there drawbacks? Of course and these are things I rarely see mentioned because the "techies have it so well" is just too good of a narrative. Some examples: no pensions (haha, but the article mentioned it, so why not?), no unions, no overtime, some get stuck with 24/7 on-call rotations, constant need to self-improve or get laid by the wayside, average job security. I can go on.

Personally I would call government employees privileged. High job security and if you just "do your time", you get set with a sweet pension!

That drawback list is very US-centric, mind.

My big concerns is the author's objectivity. This journalist has now written ten articles (including this one) mentioning Amazon in the headline, and one which strongly implicates Amazon (and has pictures of Amazon boxes), all since February of this year.

https://www.theatlantic.com/author/alana-semuels/

Of these eleven articles, ten of them run against Amazon, its business model, or its affects on society either directly in the headline or in the tagline listed on her author page...the only one I could find that didn't was "Free Shipping Isn't Hurting Amazon" piece.

So, as a person who had written a bunch of articles in the last 7 months criticizing Amazon, did that color her expectations of her Amazon Flex experience? It seems pretty clear she took the job so that she could write the piece, even basically admitting at one point that she was carrying around her reporter's notebook while on at least one of her Flex runs.

I doubt she made any false statements, but along with the objective statements, she included quite a number of subjective ones which clearly supported a thesis of "Amazon ruthlessly exploits the gig economy". And a significant portion of the article was dedicated to her own "tech support" issues...none of which seemed to be supported by quoted observations from the people she interviewed.

I don't doubt that there are valid problems and criticisms of Amazon Flex. I just don't know how much I can trust this article to objectively communicate them.

How about looking at the facts that she presented. Her articles might be negative because that is what the facts indicate.

I trust her article because she focused on the facts:

* delivery address information wrong

* heavy boxes

* No ability to contact recipient for delivery

* unreliable app for scanning packages

* etc.

"Balance" is bs if balance comes at the cost of accuracy.

Or this is what investigative journalism is all about, you suspect something bad or illegal is going on, so you go undercover to try to collect the evidences? Journalists don't stumble on evidences of misconduct by accident, they usually already have an idea about the story that they wish to write, so they investigate in that direction. Her direction seems to be investigating the shitty treatment of employees by Amazon, so she's wrote a series of articles on that subject and got a job so that she could write this one. As long as evidences presented are solid I don't see how this affects the authenticity of her stories? Especially since she's hardly lonely in this, tones of people are writing and complaining about the same kind of problems with Amazon...

I read the entire story and I did not identify any larger theme besides complaining. Is Amazon behaving immorally here (note, did not say "unethically")? Sure, I'll agree with that. If this was a concentrated attack on Amazon and their Flex program then I would be understanding. As it's written the article takes swipes at office workers (??) and laments a lack of a pension (because who gets that now-a-days besides gov/factory employees)??

To put it another way: I also order using Flex and I've never considered working a gig. Am I somehow supposed to feel bad because of this simply due to the author's hardships or feel bad about myself because I don't need to work a gig job?

Please help me understand the zeitgeist here because the downvotes surely aren't.

I read a number of themes, how contractors have been a means for companies to avoid giving benefits, how pay doesn't count in costs incurred during work, how the gig economy is inherently exploitative.

Do you just want to deny these are issues? If so why?

I'm not a downvoter, but I'll try to help you understand another perspective on this.

If you think you'll never have to consider doing this type of work, I don't think you should feel bad about using Flex, but I hope you will acknowledge that you are enjoying a level of prosperity that doesn't seem to be available to everyone.

Also, awareness of how business is able to turn things that used to be costs into externalities may be an early step in the process of making them take responsibility for costs that seem (to me) to be rightfully their own responsibility.

> The author almost injured themselves with an overly heavy box because Amazon didn't provide them with a dolly, warn them they needed one, and if they did injure themselves the medical bills are their own

Why is it someone else's fault if you lift something too heavy for you? What is "too heavy" is a fairly personal thing. It's trivial to tell if something is too heavy for you. Do I need to explain how?

As for not injuring yourself from lifting, that's a skill everyone should learn by themselves, like how to not fall down the stairs. It's not someone else's fault.

Because they gave them the package and the order to deliver it?

If the box is too heavy, refuse to lift it. It's not hard. Amazon can't force you to.

If a dolly will help, you can pick one up for 40 bucks or so (ironically, from Amazon!). I keep one around, because I find it useful. Many occupations require you to furnish your own tools (and if you're an auto mechanic, that can run into thousands). I've bought and used personal equipment at every job I've ever had.

40 dollars isn't much for you but it can be a lot to ask for many people in this country to just shell out on a moment's notice. If you find that hard to imagine because you make more than that in an hour, then may be you should take a break and realize your experience doesn't extend to people whom the article is talking about.

Remember that this job is for people who provide their own car. If you can't scrape together $40, how can you own a car? You can't even put gas in it.

You're getting there. That $40 dollars will go to gas, food, bills, basic things that you need for life. You don't have much left to pull out for random things you didn't account for.

And you'll have to quit when your headlight goes out and needs replacement, right?

People in the real world eventually have to do this once they're caught out by the cops a couple of times due to a broken headlight.

I'm genuinely not sure if you're completely unaware of the real world financial problems low paid folks have, or are just trolling now.

Maybe. If you couldn't afford to fix it before, you definitely can't after a few tickets. But if you give up the car then you can't get to your job, so how are you going to pay off those tickets?

I've been recently unemployed, I own a car, stretching to an extra $40 on top of other costs is actually tricky. I had no appreciation of this until just recently and now understand the hardships folks on unemployment benefits experience.

I was being paid GBP 76.00 per week which has to cover heat & light, food, telephone, internet, gas for the car, car insurance, car tax, etc....it goes on. There is nothing left. I was also being paid "housing benefit" which doesn't pay anywhere near the actual cost of rent.

You should try this some time before making such poorly informed and sweeping statements.

Just get fired and lose your paycheck, it's that easy. No big deal right?

If your employer asks you to lift a 30kg box and you damage your back, it's their fault, I struggle to see how you could argue otherwise. Only situation where I think it's not true is if they provided you with a dolly and you chose not to use it - then it's on you.

I'm not going to cut my arm off if Amazon ordered me to. Would you? Amazon can't possibly know what the state of your back is. Only you do, so take some responsibility for yourself.

The employer accept the job and fail to do it properly.

Well, they ask you to deliver a 30kg box.

If you can reasonably do that without damaging your back, and you choose to make an ill advised lift, maybe that's on you.

Where it's debatable is how well Amazon set you up for solving the 30kg problem in a safe way. It's quite possible they failed in providing reasonable instruction and equipment to this guy.

What if you hurt your back trying to lift a 20kg box? Or a 5 kg one? Or a 200kg one that you should know you can't lift? At some point you have to blame the worker, or blame it on bad luck.

The weight given in the article was "over 30 pounds", which is 14kg. That should not trouble a healthy adult and could easily be expected when you sign up for a job delivering package. For comparison, airlines use the "heavy baggage" tag above 23kg, and depending on the airline accept bags up to 50kg or so.

> As for not injuring yourself from lifting, that's a skill everyone should learn by themselves,

Without looking it up, what's the recommended technique to lift a 30 kg box from the back of a van?

The article mentions a box of 30 lb, not 30 kg. Lifting 30 kg is dangerous (there is a reason the weight limit for checked-in luggage is 23kg).

Isn't the limit for business class checked luggage something like 32kg?

I believe there is a very high fee attached to checking in 23kg-32kg bags (€80?) which are then specifically marked. It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s added for free on some business class fares.

Higher limits usually mean several bags.

On United I can check bags up to 75lb (34kg) for free due to status, regardless of fare. I can't remember the last time my bag was weighed or marked.

Indeed, now that I look, some airlines allow higher per-luggage limits. I wonder if it's new, and it's due to more automation of the handling.

Anecdotally, I flew Norwegian recently and I was the only one that handled the luggage. I had to figure out how to attach the label, which was mildly intimidating.

Didn't you see that they didn't tell them anything about the weight of the boxes? You are just supposed to deliver them, without any info about their size and weights, also without other details.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com