[blindhippo]

First world problems like no other...

We're talking about highly paid professionals working at a rather cushy job all things considered. It's like listening to rich kids complain about having blue M&M's touching the red M&M's in their bowl of candy.

Nothing in this whole bit of drama is shocking other then I'm not quite sure why Amazon is being singled out. All of the complaints made are systematic problems in any large corporation. The workplace isn't there to hold your hand and to be your own personal playground. In Tech, you have to earn your place every day and Amazon seems to make it clear that is the case (leadership principals, talk of hard challenges, etc). I would expect to be "managed out" if I showed up every day expecting to coast through with the bare minimum - who would want to work at a company where that is acceptable?

Boycotting the company as a customer is also pretty funny to me. The chief competition is Walmart - are the activists going to order from them instead? How is that any better ethically?

[fsloth]

A poisonous workplace with lots of employees will create huge negative externalities to the surrounding society.

1. People look up to their successfull peers. Examples succesfull companies create propagate throughout the management layers in the industry.

2. If Amazon sets a 'lets suck them dry' example then this will lower the barrier for other companies to follow suit, or enforce their existing pathologies

3. Bad work/life balance creates depressed people and is not so good for long term productivity. It might create short term kicks for adrenaline junkies and workaholics. Such practices have no rational defence, except that they appeal to certain macho people. From the POV of the company it might not be a problem since they can always hire more people to suck dry but the broken people who leave have suffered personal tragedies with various side effects.

4. What is this 'Tech' where 'one needs to earn their place every day'? It certainly does not sound like professional software engineering for sane and capable people who can choose where to work.

[blindhippo]

The funny part, I wholly agree with you. But none of this applies to Amazon, at least at the level that I work at.

I work in a remote office in a country with sane labour laws (not the US). My work/life balance is never under threat. In fact it's far better with Amazon then it was with the start-up I used to work for, where 60+ was expected all with a mantra of "we're a startup, therefore we can't pay you but we're CHANGING THE WORLD!". At Amazon, there is zero pressure for employees to work more then 40 hours unless something is truly going wrong with our areas of responsibilities, and then everyone on the team is expected to pitch in to get things back to normal. Show me a functional workplace where this isn't the norm.

The day to day for a lower level engineer is quite relaxed at Amazon. The only pressure I feel comes from my own drive to succeed, not from upper management.

But please, disregard everything I can tell you from first hand experience because it doesn't fit your predetermined bias about the company.

[hga]

Imagine how things might be today if General Electric chairman and CEO Jack Welch hadn't implemented and praised to the high heavens stack ranking.

[chimprich]

>I would expect to be "managed out" if I showed up every day expecting to coast through with the bare minimum - who would want to work at a company where that is acceptable?

So doing the "bare minimum" leads to being sacked? In that case it isn't the bare minimum. In your world the bare minimum is apparently what employees are assigned to do plus an arbitrary amount on top. Presumably workers have to gamble their livelihood on a blind auction of their free time and health in a race to the bottom in order to put a few more billion in Bezos' coffers.

[blindhippo]

Poor choice of words - doing the Bare Minimum will keep you around, but you certainly won't get favorable performance reviews (as you would expect). You're basically aiming for a 'C' grade in life if that's your approach to work. Fine if that's your goal, but Amazon doesn't encourage that mentality - other company's are a better fit for that type of person and that's apparent before you even interview.

We're software professionals. We're knowledge experts. We're expected to refine our skills and expand our knowledge base. This is rewarded handsomely at Amazon. Coasting by is not punished, but the people who do end up on backwater teams working on low-priority projects. This isn't being "managed out", but it does cost the company hires simply because even low-ambition people will eventually get tired of the garbage work that exists in these areas. How is this different from other companies?

To the point about sacrificing life for Bezo's wealth... Amazon is the only company to offer me actual stock, not stock options, not sketchy performance bonuses, but stock. I'm not too keen on the vesting period length, but I directly benefit from the company's success. In my market, Amazon is the top paying employer and offers the best options for career growth.

[mikestew]

> The chief competition is Walmart - are the activists going to order from them instead? How is that any better ethically?

Go away, constructor of straw men. The world is not solely comprised of Wal-Mart and Amazon.

[blindhippo]

What? It's true, the current main threat to Amazon in the US is Walmart. I stand by my argument - you're disparaging me while providing zero evidence to back up your argument.

[mikestew]

You know what a straw man argument is, right? It's on Wikipedia if you don't. The straw man that you constructed is that the "activists" would just switch to Wal-Mart. Your argument falls apart with that assumption. I believe it to be a safe bet that anyone that quits buying from Amazon because they mistreat their highly-paid upper middle class workers sure as hell isn't going to be shopping at Wal-Mart which abuses minimum wage workers who don't have nearly the job mobility of a software developer. In other words, why would you think one would switch to shopping at a company who exploits workers who are worse off than the ones at Amazon?