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Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

I have a long-time friend who tried to get an Amazon Warehouse job after relocating to a new city for his SO’s career. Given all of the negative press he assumed they’d be desperate for employees and he could walk right into the job. It turns out those jobs are highly competitive in the area because they paid relatively well and had good benefits.

The hourly rate alone doesn’t tell the full story. Many more typical warehouse jobs are truly hourly jobs with minimal or no benefits. He said a lot of them tried to hire people for less than full time to avoid having to provide benefits. For all of the negative press, it sounded like the Amazon Warehouse was the place to be if you wanted a decent warehouse job with benefits in his area.

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A relative worked at Amazon’s warehouse, he described it as slightly above average pay for the area with above average benefits. However, the job really sucks, injuries are common, and turnover is high at least in VA. There is a huge range of warehouse jobs including many with a lot of paid downtime, the easier the job the less they can pay.

Serious question, how do you injure yourself in an Amazon warehouse? I thought there wasn't any heavy machinery or other dangerous machines. Is it just from too much walking?

Aren't they lifting and moving packages? All sorts of muscle strains possible from that. Especially if there is little downtime for rest throughout the day.

Amazon calls their warehouse staff “industrial athletes” in internal docs.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/2/22465357/amazon-industrial...

> Amazon tells its warehouse employees to think of themselves not as overworked cogs in an enormous, soul-crushing machine, but as “industrial athletes,” and to prepare their bodies for that experience like someone training for a sporting event, according to a pamphlet obtained by Motherboard. The comparison is a troubling euphemism for a company whose workers have almost double the amount of serious injuries as the rest of the warehousing industry and who reportedly are often unable to take bathroom breaks.

> The pamphlet tells employees that some of them will walk up to 13 miles throughout the course of the day, burning an average of 400 calories an hour. It also suggests all sorts of ways to help workers prepare for the athlete life, including changes to their diets and sleep schedules and making sure they’re not dehydrated throughout the day by keeping an eye on the color of their urine. It also suggests that employees buy shoes “at the end of the day when [their] feet are swollen” to avoid tightness and blisters — advice that will be familiar to distance runners or multi-day hikers.

"Double the amount of serious injuries" - using a metric based on whether you got time off or a change in duties. So if your company is better about making you see a doctor when you get an injury, and better about honoring the doctor's recommendation regarding light duty or time off, your company's number on this metric would get worse.

I see a lot of illegal workers in the ER who get injured at work but refuse to fill out the workman's comp forms - you can guarantee that their employers have a zero rate for serious injuries using that metric

[Edit - If you're looking to really improve conditions, maybe focus on the workers who don't show up in the official numbers? Reminds me of the old story about the drunk guy looking for his lost keys by the lamppost, not where he dropped them "because the light is better here"]

I read an article about the native inhabitants of Australia and their very low rates of heart disease. It turns out that the males walked an average of 9 miles a day, the women 5.

Good Lord, that's genuinely dystopian. People often say the '70s was too biased in favour of unions, but I can't help but wonder if the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction in the present. Those two paragraphs make me want to retch like a cat puking up a hairball.

>I can't help but wonder if the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction

We are full on into an unopposed neoliberal world order. The pendulum has swung so far in this direction that an alternative or an opposition to this philosophy simply does not exist anymore in the public sphere.

Okay, that actually sounds like it might be healthier than my desk job. And Amazon providing health advice isn't a bad thing, cringey corporate speak notwithstanding. The 2x injury rate and lack of bathroom breaks are the troubling parts.

A friend of mine working at an Amazon center injured himself because he walks 5+ miles per shift. He also weighs like 350 pounds. He’s lost like 50 pounds already so hopefully he’ll get to a weight where he’s not injuring himself before he ends up having to quit.

Amazon isn’t obligated to provide my morbidly obese friend with a job, and he knows that, and he’s doing his best to keep on without destroying his body.

Sounds unpleasant, but really good for him and potentially life extending. The trick is keeping it off after switching jobs. A friend is dealing with that after moving off a busy manufacturing line to office work.

It actually sounds like a great way to lose weight if you can handle it. We need to walk more. I’ve thought about moving to NYC just to walk more.

Boston is pretty walkable, too.

Example: Some routes between Harvard Yard and Long Wharf take you through residential and nightlife areas where a lot of people life, past biotechs, MIT, a few FAANG outposts, over a bridge with great views, across the Esplanade park, past at least a major hospital, financial district, through North End (Italian restaurants), tourist area, and to harbor walk, to sit on Long Wharf and watch the boats and airplanes.

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Harvard+Yard,+Massachusetts+...

(Separate from walking, a lot of people bicycle here, and you'll see heavy bikes on some streets during commuter hours, but don't beware that bicyclist safety is so-so here. If you decide to bike instead of walk, watch out for car doors opening into your path, trucks making turns, negligent car drivers, other bikers ignoring road rules, mild resentment of bicyclists, etc. Personally, I just walk, and know that there's a good chance that a driver even going through the busiest Central Square intersection is looking at their phone. :)

We do need to walk more but it's a crappy way to lose weight. You have to put a huge number of miles in to lose a significant amount. Tracking your eating and eating less calories is the only winner really.

Put it this way: Don't eat a 250 cal chocolate bar or take a 60 minute walk? Same impact.

Incidentally I have walked 103 miles in the last 24 days...

> but it's a crappy way to lose weight

Maybe a crappy way if you are obese.

But AFAIK over years walking will strongly help maintain a good weight and keep you healthy. It certainly does help reduce weight and improve fitness compared to just potatoing. You can do more, but as a minimum starting point it is pretty bloody good.

One observation: people are generally not obese in central London and part of the reason is the few km walking per day to get to and from work via the tube.

Exercise is not a great way to lose weight. The phrase is: "You can't outrun the fork."

Deuterated water studies back this up. Humans burn roughly the same amount of calories active or passive. The body only shunts the available calories around.

Now, exercise has lots of documented benefits. Weight loss just isn't one of them.

The body temporarily shuts down multiple processes like digestion during exercise to increase peak performance. However, it still needs food etc so those calories are still burned during downtime. Active people can consume 2-3x as many calories in a day as inactive people do. At the extreme end some elite athletes need 8,000+ calories per day diets simply to maintain weight.

When I moved to Manhattan I started walking about 4 miles a day on average, but I still gained 25 pounds because I could afford all the pizza and fried chicken my heart desires. Biking felt like better exercise, but much more hazardous to your life expectancy.

I'm not sure how anyone could walk 5+ miles a shift @350lbs and not injure themself, unless they were that big from training for Strongman or the like. Humans are not meant to have that much fat.

According to my iPhone tracking, I apparently walk several miles a day just from a habit of walking when on calls (largely circling around the parking lot like a vulture, for no apparent reason and probably confusing bystanders and co-workers continuously). Not for any particular reason; I’m just fidgety.

Well into obese (but less than 300) and it’s really not an issue at all — walking is a very light activity (and far easier than standing). Also notably, this habit has not lead to any weight-loss, or perhaps I eat to make up for it.

Ask me to run however and I’m dying in short order.

I mean, agreed, and he has been injuring himself. He’s dieting and trying to slim down though. Guy used to work out and be really buff back when he was in the military but it seems like a good number of people once they get out no longer have the discipline to keep fit once you don’t have all the structure of military service.

> 5+ miles per shift

This really isn't that much. The average Disneyland visitor probably walks 5 miles per day. A nurse might walk 4 miles in a shift. I'd expect most people who aren't overweight would be able go adapt to 5 miles per day pretty quickly, and 10 is fairly doable.

> This really isn't that much. The average Disneyland visitor probably walks 5 miles per day.

What a bizarre comparison. Most people are pretty tired after visiting Disneyland. You also don’t do that 300 times a year.

They're completely untrained in it, though. You gain endurance pretty quickly, and the fact that most people can go from couch potato to 5 miles in a day and just feel pretty tired shows that distance isn't a big deal--we're just lazy.

Try doing that with 350 lbs bodyweight, though!

Seems a little low I just checked my phone and last time in commuted to our office in London I walked 2.5 miles.

They do operate some heavy equipment in the warehouse, but the people on foot aren’t that safe. Many injuries are based on people being unprepared for such an extremely athletic job, repetitive strain, or continuing to work injured. The more serious injuries are normally stuff like back injuries from lifting heavy weights bent over in a hurry, falls etc.

One example was dog food stored under a low platform so people needed to Cary 50lb bags while bent over. It’s possible to do that safely, but when you’re tired and in a hurry it’s easy to hurt yourself doing that.

These are repetitive strain or slip and fall injuries from handling heavy or unwieldy objects. Not mashed limbs from heavy machinery.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/07/24/business/insult-injur...

Lifting heavy objects, or having heavy objects fall on you is apparently common.

Are amazon jobs the new McJobs?

Not the US, but 2 of my siblings have worked in Amazon warehouses in the UK and it's the same story. The pay is decent, the work is simple (if physically taxing), and plenty of overtime is available. Only downside is the warehouses tend to be outside bus/train routes so getting there without a car is an arse, but Amazon set up shuttle buses to compensate for that.

who would've thought that vocal minority on twitter does not reflect reality for all, cuz at the end of the day Amazon hires above milion ppl

So, just to add another opinion

I've seen only positive comments (sample size around 3) about working in Amazon's warehouse in Poland

3 more anecdotes isn't going to make the data any better :)

It makes 3 points better. Just needs a few thousand more!

Actually, more noise makes the data worse.

The problem is not the number of points but the sampling method. It should be properly randomize to be useful.

>He said a lot of them tried to hire people for less than full time to avoid having to provide benefits.

There needs to be naming and shaming of those that perpetuate this practice. I know retailers (Tractor Supply) for cashiers.

If you're doing warehouse work, you are part of the logistics backbone, you deserve not to have your chain jerked around. Arguably, no one should be getting their chain jerked around, but I'll call it a win to purge this pathological HR hacking from another business layer.

> There needs to be naming and shaming

It's probably easier to name and promote the few places that don't do the "39.5hr week".

I thought the cutoff was 29.5 hours, otherwise they would have to offer health insurance due to the Affordable Care Act. I haven’t worked those types of jobs in 10+ years but that’s how it was back then at least.

My wife worked at lowes for years, and they were serious about the ".5", even. they reported to the IRS that they'd sell us health insurance for $90/mo for a family plan; but then all they could actually sell to us was a $400/mo each plan; and we never did figure out that one... before her health deteriorated to the point she had to quit that job.

> There needs to be naming and shaming of those that perpetuate this practice.

Government, by tieing things that should be universal to mandates to employers who employ a person for a certain number of hours in a week. Which, in addition to promoting this kind of behavior as a cost/utility optimization, encourages a feudal lord-servant relationship between employers and employees rather than a capitalist market-exchange relationship, and necessarily (even ignoring the effect of the optimization incentives) assures that what should be universal is instead limited to a narrower fully-employed class.

If the government provides the benefit universally and taxes to cover the costs, the perverse incentives to limit employment and further narrow access to the intended general benefit is eliminated.

Naming and shaming the people who follow the incentives government creates is pointless; name and shame the government for setting up the broken system of incentives. Any other target is just a perpetual game of whack-a-mole.

What causes this is trying to mandate "benefits" by law.

Suppose the benefits cost the company the equivalent of $3/hour. Then at the same cost they can either offer a job that pays $15/hour without benefits or a job that pays $12/hour with benefits. They're not idiots; they're going to offer the one that best allows them hire and retain workers.

That it happens to be the one with the higher pay should be telling us something -- that some workers value the money over the benefits.

Which makes a lot of sense. Many people have a family health plan from their spouse's job. They may value the flexibility of choosing when to take unpaid time off instead of working for $12/hour with paid time off, which is a monetary loss equivalent to more than 10 weeks of unpaid time off when working at $15/hour instead. They simply get less from the benefits than they get from being paid the money it costs the employer to provide them.

Stop requiring employers to provide "benefits" that many employees don't want and people wouldn't have to voluntarily work around it like this, at the cost of being unable to work 40 hours a week even if you want to.

Benefits only work if there's a large population where the risks can be averaged out. If you let people pick and choose whether they want insurance, people with known health problems will overwhelmingly want insurance, and the price will be driven up. Really this shouldn't be dealt with at the employer level but by the government - there's a net public good to everyone having guaranteed healthcare, because preventative care avoids larger emergency expenses and allows for more efficient allocation of resources. But instead you get this hyper-individualism where people want to opt into the social contract piecemeal at the time it benefits them, and opt out when it doesn't.

I 100% agree that adverse selection is a problem, but the government's rule doesn't really fix it. All that happened is that people with known health problems will look harder for full-time jobs, and healthier people will take the part-time jobs that pay slightly more per hour.

? If healthcare/benefits is provided by the government from taxes outside of your job then it doesn’t matter if you have a full/part time job?

> If healthcare/benefits is provided by the government from taxes outside of your job

But that's not the case today in the US. My point is that the government mandating that full-time jobs provide benefits (which is the case today in the US) doesn't fix the adverse selection problem. All it does is lead to a bunch of jobs right under the cutoff for full-time.

The issue there is that that if you divest the employer from the consequences of working conditions, the individual is left carrying the bag.

If as an employer you just can't get a break on the rates it costs to insure you, that's a really strong signal you have something wrong. Doing it through the government in theory gives people freedom of moving from employer to employer, but I guarantee you there is some juju that needs characterization in wresting some of the incentive shaping powers of insurers and vesting them in Government.

You're complaining that companies don't want to do the job of government.

Software engineers (including me) tend to forget what the labor market is like outside our own bubbles. Most people can’t do things we take for granted like hop to a better paying job when they get bored/unhappy.

A close friend and I were talking about this the other day. We both have well-paid tech jobs and recruiters coming out the wazoo, but our partners are both minimum wage service workers. It's making us both gradually move leftwards in our politics.

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