Amazon fired hundreds of workers a year from one warehouse over ‘productivity’ | Hacker News Reader

Amazon fired hundreds of workers a year from one warehouse over ‘productivity’

theverge.com

49 pointsTomte55 comments

Some of these facilities have thousands of employees. A few hundred firings in a year seems, at a glance, plausible.

In my experience when I was younger, low skill labour in warehouses often were employed with a wide net. Hire just about anyone and then fire the ones who show up drunk, high, not at all, slack off, pick fights, etc.

It's hard not to sound politically incorrect but these jobs attract unemployable people and they end up doing unemployable things and find themselves fired. My wife has similar stories about a Chrysler plant but holy cow those ones are unionized and never get fired.

I don't have all the facts but I'm just saying that on the surface, this is just kind of how it works. For all I know there may truly be something rotten and Amazon is being far more of a slave driver than is normal.

> Some of these facilities have thousands of employees. A few hundred firings in a year seems, at a glance, plausible.

The article mentions these numbers are for a specific warehouse, and provides the total number of employees at that warehouse (~2500).

If you're firing over 10% of your workforce annually for performance, you have fucked up expectations.

Doesn't "rank and yank" traditionally advocate firing the bottom 10% of your workforce as part of the annual review process?

I'd personally consider the whole concept of a vitality curve to be rather fucked up.

It's been all but abandoned by the biggest names behind it (GE, MS).

I don't think the fact that some companies have abandoned it means much.

GE's peak days as a company were when they enforced a high bar using a curve. The same is true for Microsoft, whose better days ended around 2005. Although their stock performance in recent times has been strong, it is largely riding on the refresh of contracts relating to Office and the transition of clients from on-premise to cloud. There has been little actual innovation from the company, and although the culture has improved under Satya Nadella, employees regularly talk about workplace politics, low-quality hires, etc.

I would disagree re: MS. They are doing pretty good in enterprise space, their bread and butter. Also whole XBox ecosystem is getting stronger as well

> If you're firing over 10% of your workforce annually for performance, you have fucked up expectations.

Or a seriously broken hiring process.

How do I properly filter applicants for low-skill jobs? If I'm hiring for an Amazon warehouse, I'm not going to ask for a resume, and background checks only catch certain things. How else am I going to know you'll be a good worker in the warehouse other than hiring and seeing how it goes?

>How do I properly filter applicants for low-skill jobs?

You hire anyone with a pulse and fire anyone who's performance is not satisfactory. If you're Amazon's size you implement some sort of system using mostly objective metrics (e.g. a no-show counts as X points but a no call no show counts as Y points and you get fired at Z points) so you can quantify performance then you figure out your churn rate and size your pipeline to compensate.

This is all post employment. It’s not a predictive hiring model which is needed but pretty much impossible at this scale. Sounds horrible but it’s like asking for a model to determine which bums will use your charity for food instead of crack.

More than that, for low skill jobs you don't want strong filters. If someone comes in and says "I was a slacker who never showed up, but now I'm reformed", "I got fired for being drunk at work but I learned my lesson", or "I just got out of prison for some awful crime and want to try honest work": you should hire them just on their word that they are reformed. Of course in all cases their word isn't worth much, but these are the first jobs of those who actually are reformed and you need to keep giving them fifth chances. If we don't slackers, drunks, and criminals need to be supported by society in some other way, which becomes a reward for bad behavior.

So for low skill jobs you hire anyone, fire the ones who aren't good workers and promote the rest.

“We only hire the best, and 10% of you are losers”. I never managed to square that circle

Not sure this is their thinking, but here's one way to square those concepts:

A person can have stellar past performance, but turn out to be a poor fit for the particular culture, workgroup, or work of the new employer.

That's an easy one. The bar is constantly being raised, so you were the best when hired, but now you're not. :(

It's not that difficult. The best would be those hires able to rise up and maintain enough productivity to keep them out of the bottom 10%, who, by definition, are the losers.

I bet Fedex and UPS have a higher churn rate. I quit after the second day working in the hub.

Remember, this isn't the churn rate we're talking about. It's involuntary separation. I'd imagine the annual churn rate is way above 10%. I don't doubt FedEx and UPS have high churn rates, but I also suspect they don't fire 10% of their package handlers annually.

That 10% fired doesn't adjust for churn tho. Over the course of a year there were at minimum 2500 employees working there, we don't know how many unique people worked there over the course of a year to find out their firing rate.

UPS does a lot of seasonal hiring during Christmas. This includes workers in distribution centers as well as helpers on delivery trucks.

I work for a mid-size manufacturing company, and we fire (or they quit) way, way more people than we keep

I wonder what the rate is at places which skew towards similar entry-level positions; for example, what % of people get fired annually in the fast-casual restaurant industry, or in retail? I don't know.

I do think that in these sorts of industries, it's important to be able to hire people with a "probationary" mindset, because if firing weren't possible an employer would become a lot more risk-adverse. It's actually really important to people with no credentials or who might have a risky profile (a criminal conviction, for example) that they be allowed to prove themselves and start building a resume, so we should be careful about incentives in these cases.

Netflix fires almost 10% of their workforce annually.

Netflix also compensates the ever-loving fuck out of you up until that moment.

I'm fairly certain most jobs at Netflix aren't low-skill warehousing.

Do you have proof??

> I'm fairly certain

Yes, but for any given job at Netflix, you go in knowing other most gigs are going to pay at least 30% less for the same work.

Amazon isn't paying their warehouse employees a premium rate to offset the risk of falling in the bottom 10%.

Don't be so sure, they still run their disc rental service out of 17 distribution facilities. They added a lot of automation in their heyday but there's still a fair amount of low-skill work to be done.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/23/netflix-dvd-business-still-a...

One in ten per year sounds about right for these sorts of jobs. I bet if you drilled down you'd find that approximately that same 10% of people is getting fired from every other jobs too. There's always a minority that is screwing up fairly often. Combine that with rigid bigCo policies on timeliness, performance, etc and you can see how 10% per year get fired.

I don't think companies really care. I have seen mass quit recently on a well oiled machine. Tech force, bad management practices. Nothing really changed and no one seem to care. In the end the quit rate was only increasing (the time that I quit)

I worked plenty of jobs like that until I got my degree. My experience lines up with yours. It's unsurprising that enough people screw up enough that a few hundred per year get fired.

Edit: Don't get me wrong, the tracking system makes this sound like a particularly shitty job as far as shitty jobs go but most people should be able to hack it.

My experience is similar, at many various low skilled jobs I've held.

It's too bad they didn't say what the median time on the job was before getting fired. That would shed some light. The unemployable type get fired relatively quickly.

But if we paid them more...

Then Amazon would replace them with robots tomorrow instead of a few years from now.

I love the way you very skillfully walk on eggshells to be circumspect and polite to make your point so as to avoid backlash and ire. [1] It's as if anything anyone says today is assumed to be not politically correct unless they go out of their way to appear kind, considerate and caring.

[1] Back in the day we would have just said 'they got fired because they are lazy losers'. I am reminded of the people working today at the seafood department at no less than Whole Foods. They didn't have the item that I normally get (literally every other day) and had no clue when they would get more in and didn't seem to care at all that I was a regular customer for that item. An actual 'shop owner' (small entrepreneur with a seafood store) would have likely cared much more and taken note that a regular customer desired the missing product. What did I think? Hmm "I guess that's why they are working the seafood counter at Whole Foods". Could there be other reasons why that is their job? Of course there could be other reasons but in any case the lack of caring about what they did (either the companies fault or their fault who knows) was very apparent and typically is.

Interestingly the women who showed up the other day at my office (immigrants and honestly don't know immigration status they work for a contractor) were way more motivated even though they barely spoke english.

This is maybe too harsh. A non-negligible portion of these people have what we today call learning disabilities.

> A non-negligible portion of these people have what we today call learning disabilities.

Well sure but if you do and if that doesn't make you 'a winner' it makes you 'a loser' doesn't it? Point is if I have no athletic skills and can't play football or hockey or soccer 'because of disabilities' doesn't that make me 'a loser' in some way?

The point is although people think that using the word 'loser' implies someone has control over the outcome but many times that is not the case. Often they have control but more often there is something else that is preventing them (family, abilities, intelligence) and so on.

Yes. I agree entirely.

Retail establishments get what they pay for. Do you expect to find a sober, skilled, intelligent competent, motivated, energetic person who "loves" his job for $9/hr? That's unrealistic and you know it is.

Amazon is not complaining. They're just firing the underperformers. Hacker News is complaining.

The idea of working for a larger company (traditional not tech) such as Whole Foods is that you have a place to move up in the company. As such and if you have ever run or owned a traditional (non tech; non vc funded; 'small business' I have...) where there is no opportunity to move you would realize that the pay is only a small part of what people are looking for. So my point is the 'carrot' with working for a large company is that if you do a good job you might become manager then district manager and so on there is a place to go. Now of course not everyone can be promoted but someone who has ability can. When my Dad came to this country he started off in a factory then moved to manager then started his own business and so on.

One other thing. Don't assume the equation will work if you drastically increase pay. If you pay more you have to charge more. If you charge more people will stop shopping. It's a delicate balance for sure.

I imagine all these facilities have a high churn rate of employees to begin with.

Given the stories I’ve heard about Amazon warehouses, I’m perfectly willing to believe they’re hiring with a wide net and there’s something rotten going on.

It's really dystopian to me that somehow the people at the bottom of society are reflexively regarded as at fault, "they're lazy, dumb etc", rather than just a corporation looking to increase profits by scare tactics. They're truly second class citizens. This practice would not just be illegal here, it would also cause "obvious exploitation" outrage.

Peoples worth as humans - which should include being able to sustain a livelihood and a decent life - is now more or less directly correlated to their worth in the marketplace. Unless they're able to prove their worth in the marketplace, hat in hand, no one cares about them, and they're discarded as trash.

Just look how casually people accept workers loosing their livelihoods here, all from some sort subconscious idea of the ultimate fairness of the current supreme deity, the Market.

Isn’t it possible that many of these people are “at the bottom of society” because they’re lazy, etc? I’m not saying that’s everyone’s situation, but it is the case for many. There are plenty of people who spent their formative years partying and doing whatever else except for schooling, and these are the types of jobs that are left for them.

It is a failure of society on some level, but it should not be up to the corporations to take on those people who are unemployable due to their own behavior and approach to life.

I grew up in really shitty conditions. People at the bottom are usually there not because they suck as people, but because they started there, and the deck is stacked against them from the very beginning of their lives.

Not saying you're wrong, but it makes more sense if you look at it the other way. Jobs that require no skills attract workers with no skills. That includes skills like time management and conflict resolution.

A friend broke his foot, and couldn't take off to recover because if he called out sick it would mean a week or two of not being scheduled. So he worked he can't be more than one minute late for a bathroom break or he is docked pay. They consider it stealing. If you get docked too many times you're fired. Some people have it shittier than others.

> "Assuming a steady rate, that would mean Amazon was firing more than 10 percent of its staff annually, solely for productivity reasons."

This is very common at a lot of white-collar places that do stack-ranking.

From a different perspective, places like Google reject 99% of candidates because they "only hire the best." Whereas Amazon warehouses seem to do the opposite - they are liberal in giving people a shot, and then rigorously weed out anyone with lagging job performance. I suspect a lot of people who get rejected at the interview stage for bullshit reasons would actually prefer the latter approach.

Productivity is a really good reason to fire people!

(I'm not advocating for Amazon's labor practices, but the headline should read pro-Amazon)

Depends on your metrics. If they're reasonable, cool. If they're abusive and unattainable, you're putting everyone to work in an environment where they are setup to fail. Not cool. I assume that's why "productivity" is in quotes in the headline, due to the common perception (which evidence leads us to believe is accurate) their success metrics in warehouses are unreasonable and borderline abusive.

https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/3/11/18260472/amazon-ware... (Suicide attempts and mental breakdowns: 911 calls from Amazon warehouses reveal that some workers are struggling)

https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/11/20/18103516/black-frid... (The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager)

https://www.npr.org/2018/12/22/679546929/working-the-holiday... (Working The Holidays As An Amazon Worker)

https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17243026/amazon-warehouse... (Amazon warehouse workers skip bathroom breaks to keep their jobs, says report)

> (I'm not advocating for Amazon's labor practices, but the headline should read pro-Amazon)

Your view of 'amazon's labor practices is most likely gleaned from what you have read about them in stories which is most certainly slanted in one direction because it makes interesting reading. Kind of a 'where there is smoke there is fire' situation.

I don't know where it is written that warehouse jobs have to be non stressful or easy and they shouldn't push you. If you think the job is to hard for you at Amazon then don't work there or for them. Do people complain that sign up to be firefighters that they have to run into burning buildings? No that is part of the job. [1]

[1] Go ahead and figure out a way that 'no that's different' or 'no but that doesn't mean they need to assume all negatives and risks.

Not advocating != Advocating against

Machines should think. People should work.

That used to be a joke. Now it's the new normal.

Amazon has begun surveillance on their engineers too. There are variety of schemes in-pilot or deployed company-wide that downright scream 'dragnet'.

First, the revamp post that New York Times article ended with a new HR head at the helm with new ideas that aren't strictly worse but none too much better.

Second, the peer review system, Forte, is a hogwash, from what I hear. It isn't taken into account for the infamous OLRs where employees are stack-ranked, which are now based exclusively on the inputs from the managers and the metrics they choose to focus on and the supporting documents/emails they bring to the table to support their bias.

Third, the metrics collection is relentless. Right from tickets resolved during on-call, to issues resolved during regular maintenance work, to code reviews or commits pushed, to design documents/wikis created/edited, to time spent building software, deploying it, code velocity... it's a mess.

Fourth, the employees get sent a daily questionnaire. And it is evident from the type of questions that they're trying to collect information on how employees react to those and if their answers are outliers or if their answers are trending towards employees who have shown poor performance previously and so on. The worse part is, when I refused to answer any of those questions, I was warned of "consequences", just as how I was warned of consequences for not submitting patents on behalf of Amazon for what they thought were valuable inventions.

Fifth, there are other internal tools (including build/deploy/test tools) that have sprung up that collect metrics per developer to see who's productive and how.

Sixth, the promotion process has changed so much that it has been reduced to a checklist and only when a manager deems his reportee fit enough, does the stars align and they get to tick off things on the checklist to get promoted. If you're not in the good books of your manager, or simply report to a manager who's biased, good luck with ever getting any recognition despite the metrics.

A lot of policies are straight out anti-employee, imo, right from how they decide compensation year-on-year, to their OLR process, to international transfer policies, to how employees are sometimes treated by the HR, to how 'well maintained' the offices are... it isn't even funny. Some engs truly are having a blast working at Amazon. I can't help but think they are in the minority (and these are mostly folks stack ranked in the top 10% to 20%). I can see them defend Amazon to death. I wouldn't fault them. They will come around some day.

I think, this culture/behaviour takes its seeds right at the top of the executive chain: The kind of hypocrisy that goes around at Amazon is plain for the HRs and Executives to see, and if they can't, I believe it's the stock price that is blinding their mind, clouding their judgement.

Apologies for the rant, and I admit that Amazon, specifically AWS, is otherwise a great place to hone your skills even if its relatively akin to baptism by fire.

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