NYT report: Amazon is hell to work at

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Iā€™ve long had this issue with BoingBoing. The store sells basically ThinkGeek stuff - plastic Star Wars ice cube trays and other novelty items (is the store still a thing?), the new store sells garbage and spews spammy posts.

Hereā€™s this great blog with a great point of view, how come there isnā€™t a store that is curated with as much care as the blog?

At Christmas they do a nice list of gift suggestions, which all links out to Amazon or whoever else is selling the stuff - why isnā€™t this kind of thing in their own store?

I feel like thereā€™s an opportunity here for a marketing person to step in and work out a store that actually reflects the BoingBoing brand.

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Iā€™ll have a think about it!

Seriously though I guess itā€™s a state of mind thing - showers are the same. Something about truly switching off and letting your brain take over I guess.

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Itā€™s called a Vurp, you heathen. 11 demerits and Jeff Jeffty Jeff will see you in his volcanoOffice immediately.

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Jeff Bezos is the new Ross Perot.

Maybe if Bezos and his peers argued better against TPP than H.R.P. railed against NAFTA, we might have a chance.

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I really donā€™t understand the uproar. There are a lot of reasons to dislike Amazon - itā€™s effect on local bookstores, the way they treat their warehouse users, etc. But that they are a horrible high pressure place to work as a developer?

If you are in the industry and didnā€™t know that already, you probably arenā€™t keeping your eyes and ears as open as you should be. Next, itā€™s hardly a unique situation. Microsoft had similar horror stories at one point (Iā€™ve heard they have gotten a lot better in recent years), and I can think of another place that likes boat racing that also has its workplace dysfunction (if perhaps not of the exact same sort). Some people donā€™t prosper in such environments (I doubt Iā€™ll be taking a job with Amazon anytime soon), some barely survive, and some thrive.

We arenā€™t talking about minimum wage unskilled workers - If you donā€™t like it, you probably have the means to go somewhere else (and likely get a pay-bump and/or RSUā€™s for your trouble).

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[quote=ā€œVPescado, post:27, topic:63892ā€]
But that they are a horrible high pressure place to work as a developer?
[/quote]Itā€™s not web developers, not that they deserve to be treated like that anywhere, itā€™s the entire company, from the guys packing boxes all day to the white collar guys in the front office. One giant company, trying to monopolize online selling is doing so at the expense of treating all employees horribly.

If racist Henry Ford, in the middle of the Great Depression, where he could fire someone and get two more the next day, can create a 40 hour workweek and $5 wages, itā€™s hard to understand why the same kind of worker respect canā€™t apply to the current situation.

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Iā€™m sure Bezos is totally on board with your $5 wages plan.

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I am a little surprised the warehouses arenā€™t all full of undocumented illegal immigrants paid under the table. But they probably didnā€™t want to have to deal with all the rape.

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Yeah he wasnā€™t the nicest of guys, but he did understand that his workers needed a living wage and time away from work to be productive employees. I boggle at how modern CEOs seem to be completely clueless about this.

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Some people on Twitter noticing Bezos sent out the company-wide rebuttal memo, and asked staff to escalate to HR, on a Sunday.

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"Donā€™t you care about your stock prices? Youā€™re so close to being fully vested! This hurts us all, teammate.

Sent from my boat!"

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Iā€™m lucky in that my employer seems to ā€œget itā€ā€¦ As long as folks donā€™t take advantage of it, we are very lax on break times, internet usage, etc. Occasionally the wrong person gets promoted/hired ā€“ Supervisors/Managers that turn into micromanaging dicks are first coached and then let go or reassigned if they donā€™t ā€œget itā€. Every once in a while things get a bit out of hand, and then things get tightened down for a whileā€¦
We used to have a relatively high turnover, now itā€™s hard to find somebody who hasnā€™t been here for around 10 years (those that do leave, usually come back (or want to come back). Without the brain/talent drain, all of our quality/performance metrics have constantly improved to the point where our competitors can only compete by cutting their prices to the point where they are running close to a loss.

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Ross Perot had a modicum of charisma.

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So long as those workers were white, didnā€™t drink, and liked to eat hamburgersā€¦

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And charts. Lots of charts.

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And NOT JEWS. You canā€™t forget his anti-Semitic ramblings.

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well by not the nicest of guys I was meaning racist dickweed, but I figure most of us here know he was that by now.

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I bet their solution is to get their staff to work longer hours :smiley: Classic efficiency fallacy.

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