I thought he was referring to the fact you don't have to be particularly clever or competent person to keep your job. Amazon isn't known for firing people on the spot for honest mistakes (CoE gets filed and life goes on). It's usually more along the lines of people are not doing the work they were assigned to do.
I wish that was the case. I've seen brilliant people forced out of their jobs because a particular project was botched: a principal engineer, a former founder of a company bought by Amazon, an amazing director. And those were just the people I encountered on my journey.
Amazon certainly won't "fire you on the spot" in most cases; that gets them all sorts of trouble. However, if something got screwed up and your name is on it, I'm sorry to say it's just a matter of time before it comes up in a review cycle.
There are good folks at Amazon. Really. But as a whole, I don't see evidence of a company that even attempts to see the long-term value of people.
> "FAANG" companies that OP mentions have a smug sense of superiority.
I think it is the opposite.
No one is going to fire you over shipping a kludge or low quality software, especially when you document why it is the case. People get themselves into trouble by getting emotionally invested in their work and avoiding the task at hand. If someone gives you an idiotic task at Amazon, give them an idiotic solution. You are right though, if you want purpose and real meaning behind your work seek it out elsewhere.
Doesn't work this way. When they give you shit, you either turn in gold or resign. Otherwise it will just be scapegoat firing. Seen this many times. This happen not because the company culture but individual managers that need to protect their ass while waiting fo opportunity to move before their scapegoating turn on them. That is why theyb
should have implemented a 360 degree feedback/review yearly performance. Bad managers need to be rooted out at most no longer thatn 1 season of review.
If you got fired over this it's highly likely you said something pretty bad. The only times I have seen anyone get instafired at Amazon is when they have done something that could be deemed as harassment. (eg. making sexual or racial advancements towards a direct report) Anybody else who gets fired for performance reasons knows they are thin ice for a long time.
Sometimes you can get fired/hired over competitive hiring process. Like SWE who have worked there that fail to gain a level almost every other year tend to slant toward the let go phase so Amazon can pick up a shiney new employee in place. This was something Microsoft used to do long ago. I don't agree with this model unless there are traits to the employee that are making work life for everyone harder.
I’m reasonably sure they got “advances” and “harassment” jumbled up. Ie, both “(unwanted) sexual advances” and “sexual harassment” are things, but only “racial harassment” is a thing.
At least, I think so. Sometimes the world changes while I’m looking the other way.
Making some sort of harassment with a racial component that's on par with sexual harassment. Despite all the DEI policies and whatever, the baseline for termination is pretty much the same as most employers, off color remarks are not getting you fired but putting down a fellow employee certainly can.
> Things like this are going to keep happening and keep getting worse until the middle class/upper middle class realizes that our current lifestyle and access to "cheap" services is being held up by a systematically abused and underpaid labor force that isn't given the time, compensation, respect, or basic decency to support doing a good job.
Disagree.
This is entirely the fault of yes-men/pie in the sky management at Amazon. Any manager with the slightest bit of autonomy at Amazon is making six figures and is willing to throw their employees under the bus for money. They will do literally anything to avoid admitting that a problem that exists that can be solved but will cause a KPI to go down. Absolutely no one is willing to go to bat for ideas that cause temporary productivity decrease but a quality and productivity increase over the long run as the company gets better at solving the problem.
Btw. fun cultural difference: In some other countries it's not considered Ok to keep packages on front porches or next to mail boxes. Drivers in the Czech Republic would never leave package like that and hence it would be their mistake not Amazons/Bazoses.
Yeah this seems insane to mee too, also from central Europe. If it doesn't fit in your mailbox and you can't pick it up in person, you get a note to pick it up at the post office or you can choose to deliver it to a nearby gas station. Both of those will check delivery details and your photo ID before giving you the package (the latter charging you some change for the service).
Nobody here would even consider leaving it outside, despite our crime rate being waay lower than somewhere like the US, where people seem to be 100% fine with that idea.
I've recently had one or two packages left in my recycling bin for paper/cardboard with a note from the driver saying they put it there. That was kind of a shock, because that's simply not done here in the Netherlands unless you have a personal understanding with the delivery driver.
It was also really uncomfortable because I definitely don't want delivery drivers walking anywhere around my house except for the path from garden gate to front door.
In Sweden where I live, if it doesn't fit in your mailbox you'll have to pick it up somewhere.
In Germany a friend of mine told me that if they're not home at time of delivery Amazon's shipping partner will intentionally deliver to her neighbors, smaller city though but I guess culture is indeed different.
>In Germany a friend of mine told me that if they're not home at time of delivery Amazon's shipping partner will intentionally deliver to her neighbors
It's quite common in Germany to accept parcels for neighbors - but that's also because in Germany, a lot of people live in flats in small-ish housing blocks where you know your neighbors. So, like 6-12 flats per house, not high-rises.
But we have the same problems in Germany as described in the article: especially Amazon's own drivers frequently just don't try to ring but instead just leave the boxes outside or just throw them into the hall.
The German postal system has pretty good public lockers, years before we got Amazon Lockers here. Used them a lot, but lately due to fragmentation of the delivery market and those DHL lockers being reserved for the postal system, I more frequently have to drive to some bar or kiosk to fetch my boxes when the sender chooses a different logistics partner.
This is the normal procedure in the Netherlands as well, for I think all-but-one of the package delivery services. If you're not home, delivery goes to one of the neighbours (could be 5-6 houses away if the driver already knows that that one is at home). Might not be common in the inner cities, but definitely in towns and suburbs. Good for social cohesion, as otherwise we wouldn't see most of these people for months at a time.
It's common to such a degree that many of the shipping forms on webshops have a dedicated field to indicate that you don't want this, though I've never felt the need to use this; definitely more convenient to walk over to the neighbours than to a pickup point.
In Poland delivery drivers just call you and ask what do you want to be done with package. If you don't respond, package waits in delivery center. Phone number is typically required field.
I'm reluctant to bring COVID19 into this conversation, but the reason Sweden managed "OK" (In relation to how nonexistent our regulations were) is because we're "the most" (don't have source) isolated people in the world.
We don't talk to strangers, we don't have the kiss on the cheek thing, we stand in well formed distanced lines, we avoid interaction at "any cost".
I would love it if this delivery thing was the normal procedure in Sweden, it builds trust and relationships in your surroundings. These days unless you live in a teeny village you don't really know your neighbors, other than what car they're driving, so that you can buy a more expensive one with borrowed money next time.
Our national anthem says something like "I wanna live and i wanna die in the Nordics", yeah nah!
I think I didn't get my point through, it wasn't about covid but rather that we don't interact socially with people we don't already know / know through someone.
I don't want my post delivered to my neighbour. I much prefer the system we have which sends me a text saying that the package has arrived at the nearest pickup point which is a supermarket within five minutes drive or a locker that is less than ten minutes walk away.
Also, my neighbours are no more likely to be at home than I am.
I think it depends on the delivery company. Amazon, Hermes, and DPD have been fairly good with that in my experience, Royal Mail have always made me go through the faff of a trip to the sorting office no matter what.
Oh yeah, Royal Mail are annoying for that, especially since the sorting office around here is in the middle of nowhere. Every other courier will try a neighbour though.
My wife and I used to live in a street where we were usually the only people at home during the day. All the delivery companies quickly realised we would take in anyone's parcels, so our living room was often like a mini sorting office!
The main reason for this is not just a cultural difference, but a legal difference. Only the USPS can legally deliver to mailboxes. Otherwise, other services would definitely use them. There are, in some cases, other delivery services that ask their customer to have separate delivery boxes installed for their packages.
It's not this. Mailboxes in the American sense are uncommon in my country (most properties have a letter box, which is literally just big enough to fit a letter or small padded envelope through). Delivery companies still don't/(can't?) just leave it on a front step and call it delivered. If you're not there they'll maybe try deliver to your neighbours and failing that, send it back to their depot and either try another day or ask you to pick it up.
I didn’t say there wasn’t a cultural difference, I said it wasn’t just a cultural difference. Signing for packages also used to be common in the US too, that culturally started changing around the dot com bubble when e-commerce companies fought for customers’ approval. Because even big American mailboxes can’t legally receive even a small envelope from a courier, it has become culturally normal to have them left out. It is normal because it is universally done.
It is a chore to open your mouth. A person shouldn't be subject to being prepared to engage in a 100 different conversations for the crime of walking outside their house. It also doesn't help that the vast majority of interactions are negative (pan handling, cat calling, sales pitches, political affiliations, religious evangelism, scams, asking for favors / free stuff, bullying, snooping, etc.)
Doesn't this track with human existence? Most of my inbox is spam, even if I fight to control it. That doesn't mean I turn my email off or never use it. All of the activities you noted suck, but there's a lot more humans looking for something other than that. I ride my bike around town a lot and end up meeting a lot of strange people because of that. Some people think it's weird and obviously straight up other me if I say, "hi" -- but who would I be if I didn't? When I lived in San Diego a good number of these interactions ended up in me being able to get someone homeless water (fun fact, not all homeless people look what one might think is homeless.)
One time, I ran across a guy who was clearly struggling with a very messy divorce and struggling to get back on his feet. I sat down and just listened for the better part of an hour. I shared my own story of struggle and loss, and at the end he seemed like a large weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Sometimes, all people need is a bit of connection to get through life. Someone to acknowledge their existence in a world that otherwise doesn't care about them or their story. I'm by no means a priest or hippie, just an average dude who rides a bike and likes to say, "hi".
No it doesn't track with human existence. In the past such things lead to wars and large schisms in societies, it is completely abnormal for the vast majority of anything to be negative and the prevailing wisdom be just grin and bear it.
The USA was founded on the idea of negative rights and an opt in culture, instead today we increasingly see a shift to people demanding positive rights and putting the burden on the individual to opt out. In the future I could totally see a market to have a robot buddy follow you around and have responses ready for all the things people want to pester you with.
