
What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work? - pinewurst
https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/23/what-is-this-weird-twitter-army-of-amazon-drones-cheerfully-defending-warehouse-work/
======
agwa
Let's say you're a company with a serious PR problem about the working
conditions in your warehouses.

You set up 15 Twitter accounts claiming to be employees of your warehouses.
You make sure the accounts are laughably bad at concealing the fact that they
are shills, with cookie-cutter bios and responses that are obviously canned
talking points. This ensures that the accounts are discovered and written up
by various publications, and the articles widely shared.

The articles, while laughing at how transparently phony the accounts are,
inevitably mention that you are now offering tours of your warehouses (which
makes you sound trustworthy since you're not hiding anything), and embed the
Tweets that say you pay more than other companies in your industry and offer
medical benefits. (Since this information is falsifiable (capable of being
proven false, but not necessarily false) it's credible even though it's coming
from a shill account.)

You've probably not made anyone's opinion of you worse (you look more stupid
than malevolent), but you've gotten your message in front of eyeballs and it
might make some people think better of you.

~~~
jakobegger
It's amazing how well this works despite being obvious propaganda. I felt my
own opinion on Amazon Fullfilment Centers change as I read the article.

One thing that makes propaganda like this so effective is that journalists
generally do not bother to verify any propaganda claims (eg. does Amazon
really pay 30% more?), so even if they write articles making fun of you they
still repeat your message.

~~~
jancsika
Can you explain a little about what you felt changing in your opinion here?

What I got out of it was that Amazon had previously been dehumanizing their
workers to the point that the PR drones have to now overtly brag about
complying with OSHA laws.

~~~
adventured
The questions it prompts are pretty straight forward.

Does Amazon actually pay ~30% better now than their competitors (or anything
close to that)? Do they offer dental, vision and healthcare coverage for all
employees?

If those things are true, then I think better of Amazon because of it. I would
have guessed none of those things were true otherwise. The media and
essentially all comments online proclaim that Amazon employees are being
tortured horrifically on a daily basis and paid absolute bottom tier wages
across the board. Those articles and opinions have, to one degree or another,
tilted my opinion of Amazon in a negative manner.

Can anyone here speak to if those positive things are true and or mostly true?
I have no idea. I'd think better of Amazon if they were.

~~~
FC_Associate
I'm not exactly sure how much better Amazon pays, if at all better, here in
SoCal starting pay is around $12-$14 per hour for L1 associates, but
anecdotally I feel like this is on the higher end when compared to similar
jobs, at least compared to the jobs I've held. I can't speak to the insurance
coverage provided since I'm a part time worker but from what I've heard, while
pay isn't great, the insurance seems to be pretty good once you're eligible.

I will say that from what I've seen my station managers take safety very
seriously. Some of this must extend up the corporate ladder because I had a
friend who was injured on the job here and Amazon did a very good job of
making sure he got the care he required. He actually wanted to come back to
work much earlier than Amazon would allow, he missed his coworkers, but they
wanted to make sure he was completely healed and made it clear that he
shouldn't rush things. He was being paid worker's comp during this time. This
certainly made a good impression on me.

I also really appreciated how straight forward the hiring process was. I was
unemployed and homeless, I actually lived on an empty lot behind our warehouse
for a while, when I was hired and out of all the jobs I applied to Amazon had
the most streamlined hiring process. This might not seem like a huge deal but
when you're already struggling it was nice to not have too many hoops to jump
through to try and land a job.

Obviously due to my background I'm probably viewing my work overly positively,
it feels pretty great to finally have a little bit of savings, I've saved up
around $1500 over the past year and this is the most money I've had in my
entire life, but overall I've enjoyed my time at Amazon. But again, from the
reporting I've seen there are still some pretty glaring systemic problems
within the company.

Edit: I saw a poster comment under this post asserting that I was being paid
to post here in defense of Amazon, the post has since been deleted after
receiving some downvotes, for the record I did not downvote the poster, but I
will address their concerns. I can certainly understand why my post might
raise suspicions. To give some background I have another account on HN that
I've been active on for approximately three years and have a bit over 2000
karma. I post a few times a month, and by post I mean I usually just ask tons
of questions about topics I have a limited understanding of and the kind
people here try their best to explain things to me. I wanted to keep this
account separate form that one since I don't post anything Amazon related
using my normal account. I hope I don't sound like too much of a shill but I'm
somewhat excited to finally be able to contribute to a topic I have some
understanding of.

~~~
wool_gather
> He was being paid worker's comp during this time. This certainly made a good
> impression on me.

Just to be clear here: this is required by law, not something that the company
is doing out of the goodness of its heart. It's also a fraction of what one's
normal wages would be, which I would say is a more likely explanation for the
injured person's eagerness to return than that "he missed his coworkers".

> they wanted to make sure he was completely healed and made it clear that he
> shouldn't rush things

I won't fault them for this, as I don't have details like what/how serious the
injury was. But often a better alternative to no work at all is to temporarily
_reassign_ the person to another role where their injury is not an issue (desk
job of some kind, generally). This way the employee continues to get full or
near-full wages.

EDIT: Also, forgot to point out that work restrictions are defined by a doctor
who treated the injured person, not by the employer. They can get in serious
trouble for forcing someone to work in excess of those restrictions. So again,
not really a sign of benevolence.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Right, worker's compensation benefits are paid by an insurance company, not by
the employer.

~~~
ams6110
It is, but the cost of worker's comp insurance coverage for an employer is
very closely tied to claims experience. If an employer has a track record of a
lot of claims, their worker's comp insurance is going to be very expensive. So
there's still an incentive for the employer to operate safely and minimize
employee injuries.

~~~
wool_gather
Good points both, thanks for adding those details!

------
eksemplar
Had anyone ever done a piece of investigative journalism on the actual
conditions at Amazon? A company that big will have some terrible managers, and
the fact that it’s not discovering those easily, is problematic, but that
doesn’t mean the entire company is rotten.

I’m a manager in a Scandinavian municipality, and because I work with lean and
efficiency I get to see all sides of our operation. I’ve seen departments run
so badly that employees were crying every day, and it took HR a year to fix
it. I’ve seen departments where sleeping with the boss was the main road to a
pay-raise. Hell one of our senior managers who sleeps with employees at the
Christmas party, still works for us because nobody wants to step up in public.
Some departments have 30% sickleave while others have 2%.

That doesn’t mean the overall working conditions are bad at the municipality.
In fact we score 9/10 in employment satisfaction. This in itself is a bit of a
problem though, because it’s higher than it should be, but that’s another
story.

when you employ hundreds of thousands, you’re bound to have some really bad
stories among them. Amazon may be all bad, and I could easily have missed the
story that actually did the research, but I simply haven’t seen one.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
The side of Amazon that works in offices and makes good money also has a
reputation as a bad place to work, compared to other major tech companies. See
the "Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk" article from
the NYT a few years back.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-
amazon-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-
wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html) Anecdotally, as you say,
that does seem to depend a lot on your department--good local management can
make a lot of difference--but you don't see anywhere near that many horror
stories coming out of Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc. It does seem that Amazon,
as a company, is less concerned about the welfare of its white-collar
employees.

And if they don't mind abusing their highly paid, highly skilled knowledge
workers, I would be _amazed_ if they gave a single fuck about their unskilled
laborers.

~~~
Applejinx
That's the way to get the warehouse workers to comply. Arguably it's BETTER
(certainly more effective) if it's that way all the way up the chain, because
you'll get buy-in if the lower rungs see that the upper rungs of the latter
are pushing themselves just as hard or harder.

If Jeff Bezos cries at his desk, into his apparently meaningless kabillions of
dollars, because he just CAN'T quite keep up with what he expects of himself,
that would be the final piece of the puzzle. I would suggest that's not
impossible: it'd fit the pattern.

At that point the question you ask isn't 'is this fair or are the people
getting exploited'. Instead you ask 'are all these people crazy? Do we need to
have some kind of intervention?'

The key point here is that you can't assume the situation is designed to abuse
lowly workers and coddle management. I think a key innovation at Amazon is,
everyone cries at work and/or dies in harness, no exceptions.

It's fair to talk about whether that's acceptable. From all the horror
stories, and from my understanding of business, they manage to extend the
abuse as high up as possible, and it might go a lot higher than you think. The
goal is to make a company full of desperate, last-ditch warriors that try to
destroy all competition to their last dying frothing breaths: again, no
exceptions.

Should all society work like this? I think that's debatable, but allow an
Amazon to do it and they'll steadily kill everything else, and that's the
intention.

~~~
tboyd47
This matches a recent experience of mine working on a dev team at a large tech
company. We joked about ADD or "Abuse-Driven Development," because we would
always hear our bosses say, "X needs to be in tomorrow or I'm going to get
screamed at," "Okay, which of these is going to be a bigger beating if it's
missing," "I live and die by this product," "It's my ass that's on the line
for this," etc. Not only that, but they would brag about how little they were
being paid and how late they worked every day. We would get emails from them
after 1AM regularly. I never encountered any behavior like that at any other
company.

------
heroprotagonist
I wonder if the recruiters for these “totally optional roles” are the sort who
would also provide helpful reminders that wearing 15 pieces of flair is just
the bare minimum.

> Look, we want you to express yourself, okay? Now if you feel that the bare
> minimum is enough, then okay. But some people choose to wear more and we
> encourage that, okay? You do want to express yourself, don't you?

\-- Office Space, 1999

I can almost feel the soul leeching sensation behind the forced cheerfulness.
Though that could be a bit of projection if these are PR people pretending to
be workers instead of workers acting as PR people.

But it's still disturbing in a more direct way than news reports about workers
peeing in bottles to help shave time to hit performance targets.

~~~
DoreenMichele
On the upside, I recently learned that the actual restaurant chain that
inspired that bit quietly did away with flair after the movie came out.

/apropos of nothing

~~~
mtmail
That was TGI Friday's according to
[http://mentalfloss.com/article/61686/20-things-you-might-
not...](http://mentalfloss.com/article/61686/20-things-you-might-not-know-
about-office-space)

------
FC_Associate
These accounts certainly seem like they are being directed or encouraged by
corporate. I know quite a few of the ambassadors at the warehouse where I work
and I don't think any of them would post these kind of responses on Twitter
without some kind of direction from above.

Also, in case there is confusion with the term "ambassador", from my
understanding this is mostly an internal title for associates who lead some
training sessions for new hires. It doesn't come with any pay or benefit
increases, it's just a nice thing to do if you like training new hires and
want an occasional break from your normal duties. These aren't really meant to
be outward facing brand ambassadors, at least that's been my understanding.

Disclosure: I work at an Amazon warehouse.

~~~
jancsika
Someone above wrote this:

> People get bathroom breaks, but those count against your rate, and people do
> sometimes get written up for taking them, although that's as much a matter
> of Amazon encouraging ruthlessness in management as anything. I know of one
> anecdotal story of a worker who was apparently written up for the time it
> took them to clean up after their own nosebleed.

Does this ring true to you?

~~~
FC_Associate
So I want to be very clear that based on extensive reports I've read in the
press, and anecdotes that have been shared online, what krapp said definitely
goes on, but no, personally I have never witnessed that.

There are two main reasons why it's possible that I've never run across such
cases, the most logical one being that I've worked primarily in a Delivery
Station and not a Fulfillment Center. From what I've experienced the Delivery
Stations are, for lack of a better term, not run as "efficiently" as the FC's,
so the metrics that are used to track employee performance aren't quite as
well quantified. There is still obviously a lot of performance tracking with
regards to rates, but due to the less efficient and structured layout of the
DS, there seems to be a bit more leeway given.

Also, I think I've been extremely fortunate with the management that I work
under and they seem to take worker safety and the overall work environment
very seriously. I can't imagine any managers at my station writing anyone up
for taking bathroom breaks, and definitely not for handling a bloody nose.
Again, just to be clear, I'm not at all refuting the accuracy of those
reports, issues like that have definitely occurred in Amazon warehouses, but
the environment at my warehouse seems to be significantly more worker
friendly. I think this is probably due to our station managers' oversight.

Also, I've only been working at Amazon for slightly over one year, so it's
possible that they have been making genuine progress on these issues.

~~~
jancsika
> I can't imagine any managers at my station writing anyone up for taking
> bathroom breaks, and definitely not for handling a bloody nose.

What exactly _is_ the policy on bathroom breaks?

~~~
fcthrowaway
(I've worked in an FC for over a year. I'm an L1, not a PA or manager.)

Most functions in FCs are "direct": they have rate expectations that are
automatically tracked. Every minute you're in a direct function counts toward
your rate. You can go to the bathroom whenever you need to, but it'll lower
your rate. (Some functions are "indirect", meaning that they don't involve use
of any digital tools and so can't be tracked.)

"Time off task" is also automatically tracked. If you go some amount of time
without scanning anything -- I think it's five minutes -- that'll show up on
your time. Managers know that people have to go to the bathroom and usually
won't make a big deal out of it, but if you take an unusually long time in the
bathroom you might get written up. TOT writeups are supposed to be automatic
but I think managers have some discretion.

I think I was written up for a bathroom break before -- I'm not sure, since my
FC isn't very good at delivering feedback -- but I was in there for half an
hour, so it was sort of understandable.

There haven't been issues with bathroom breaks where I am, but there's only
one floor. The site in the story with associates peeing in bottles apparently
had multiple floors, with bathrooms only on the bottom floor. It'd be
difficult to take a bathroom break while maintaining the expected rate and low
TOT at sites like that.

I think rate expectations are consistent across the network, meaning that
managers, or even site leads, can't adjust them to account for things like
distance to the bathroom.

In short: you won't get written up for taking a bathroom break, and you can
just go to the bathroom when you need to, but you _might_ get written up for
low rates or high time off task, and you might end up with low rates or high
time off task for going to the bathroom if it's far away or you take a long
time.

~~~
freeone3000
So, in short: You might get written up for taking a bathroom break if the
bathrooms are far away from where you work?

~~~
fcthrowaway
I'm basing this on the articles about it. I've never personally seen it
happen. I've seen people duck out to the bathroom to take phone calls and they
don't seem to have run into any trouble over it; but where I work, the
bathrooms aren't far from the floor.

If you have to go down four stories to get to the bathroom, on the other hand,
it'd be pretty hard to maintain the rate, and if you don't maintain the rate
you'll probably get written up for that.

------
EasyTiger_
> I can safely say that none of MY ideas have panned out anywhere near what
> Jeff Bezos has accomplished. I am more than happy, though, to continue
> working here, at BFI4, in WA. I receive a (more than fair) wage and work
> with some really good people. Making history, every day.

Blink twice if you need help

~~~
the_af
> "Dear Lisa - As I write this, I am very sad. My ideas have not panned out
> LIKE THOSE OF MIGHTY JEFF BEZOS, WHO ALSO PAYS US VERY WELL. Sincerely,
> WAREHOUSE WORKER"

------
Applejinx
Shit, if I was an Amazon warehouse worker and had the chance to get paid the
same except SOME of my workload was sitting down and shilling for Amazon on
twitter, I would jump (well, sit) at the chance.

It's a different kind of demanding, more like being a commercial writer,
probably more open to people who are damn good commercial writers and happen
to be working as a picker in an Amazon warehouse. It'd be like getting paid as
a picker but being paid to have breaks and worker rights.

I don't think it's illegal to do this, but it is as manipulative as it's
possible to be. Therefore that's probably just what's happening there: if you
can write and shill effectively on Twitter there's a chance that you get to do
that and pretend to yourself that it's a break or rest period.

Very Amazonian.

~~~
krapp
>Shit, if I was an Amazon warehouse worker and had the chance to get paid the
same except SOME of my workload was sitting down and shilling for Amazon on
twitter, I would jump (well, sit) at the chance.

They probably wouldn't let you sit down, unless you were shilling on your
lunch break. Amazon has a policy against their warehouse workers sitting down
while on the job, not even HR is allowed to sit when they're staffing the
front.

You can squat though, and I've tried to get around it by sitting seiza.

~~~
nasredin
>>>Seiza is the Japanese term for one of the traditional formal ways of
sitting in Japan

I am surprised there's no workplace shootings in Amazon warehouses a la USPS.

------
forapurpose
People talk about blockchain and ML/AI as the revolutionary technologies of
the day, but I think public manipulation via the Internet (social media at
least, probably more) may turn out to be more significant.

Is it real and does it work? Undoubtedly, there are people who believe it
works and invest a lot of resources in it, from businesses to political
movements to governments (Russia and China, for example). We can see that
disinformation can be effectively spread, and it seems hatred and other things
as well. Arguably, we can see it to a degree in Facebook's and Google's (and
others') valuations. We discuss it, from a different perspective, on HN
regularly. But what are the technical details of this new tool: In what
situations does it work and in what does it not? How powerful is it? How much
does it cost? How does it work on a detailed level? What are the key
components of this machine? Is anyone talking - we know it's done widely, so
it seems that information about this technology should be available. (I'm not
asking for speculation - we have heard plenty of that - I'm looking for actual
technical knowledge.)

Another way of looking at it: Perhaps it's analogous to the Creel Commission -
innovations in manipulation via a new communication technology.

For example, how did Amazon and others turn around Seattle's new tax so
quickly and effectively? IIRC, it was widely supported and then public opinion
reversed itself in a matter of months.

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
I believe Snowden shined a light at some of the disinformation programs that
are operated by the govt. I know for a fact these types of campaigns exist on
a regular basis on a grand scale.

~~~
pdkl95
[https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-
manipulation/](https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/)

------
kizer
They’re not chatbots - the replies are too specific and organic in some of the
tweets I read. I’m guessing Amazon told these workers that someone would
convey their general sentiments on their behalf. That or this is satire, I
hope.

~~~
bkor
My observation: The article doesn't say that it is automated, just that
they're drones (meaning: always behaving the same way). I assume they hired a
few people to do this (optionally through some other company). It seems like
they got a few standard responses and they need to stick to that. Might be
e.g. in Manilla or somewhere in India. Reasoning is that they really stay to
the script. The responses are so similar, normally you'd try to tweak it more
so it is more natural. I noticed for outsourced stuff they tend to stick more
to the script no matter if it makes sense or not. It's up to the manager to
notice that the something needs to be tweaked.

------
anonytrary
I don't think the ground workers at Amazon:

1\. Care about tweeting about their company.

2\. Talk like that.

However, I think this could be real if:

1\. Amazon has some incentive program that basically allows workers to take on
a "marketing assignment" for some sort of bonus. If so, how is this different
than contriving good reviews about your restaurant on Yelp?

2\. Amazon has developed or is paying for third party software that lets their
PR people quickly manage and create activity on multiple Twitter accounts from
a central interface.

~~~
krapp
>Amazon has some incentive program that basically allows workers to take on a
"marketing assignment" for some sort of bonus.

I haven't heard of any such program, but if it existed, I guarantee Amazon
wouldn't offer a bonus for it.

~~~
fcthrowaway
They wouldn't offer a bonus. They'd offer entry into a drawing for an Amazon
gift card. But I haven't heard of any such program either, nor of any attempt
to get us to run PR for them, other than occasionally sending out emails
asking us to review Amazon on Glassdoor.

(IME, most FC associates never check their Amazon email accounts, so they
wouldn't see that.)

~~~
FC_Associate
For some reason my station never even offers Amazon gift cards during
contests, it's usually Subway, Starbucks, Target, or occasionally a Visa
prepaid card.

And I'm fairly certain most associates at my station aren't even aware they
have an @amazon email address so they definitely aren't checking it. Nice to
see another L1 around here.

------
Amabot1902
Of late Amazon has been working hard internally to improve its company image.
There are frequent emails about reviewing Amazon on glass door, they also
provide images of the Amazon smiley and encourage employees to use this as a
background on their social media profiles. They encourage employees to follow
and retweet the Amazon news handle on Twitter. So this one does not seem
organic and is part of Amazon drive to improve the image about working
culture, definitely pr.

------
sidcool
It has been proven time and again that if a company is doing well financially,
their internal people policies are not paid attention to.

All the people centric PR that companies dish out is simply another strategy
to make more money without employee revolt.

Having said this, it's not completely company's fault. The financial system
judges companies solely on their profits and future outlook, not employee
happiness and well being.

------
bhauer
I'm fairly certain these are satire and not actually affiliated with Amazon at
all.

Just the bio alone seems to give it away:

[https://twitter.com/fc_ambassador/with_replies](https://twitter.com/fc_ambassador/with_replies)

Maybe only this one is satire? Hard to tell which level of galaxy brain this
is.

~~~
kilovoltaire
That one certainly seems like satire, but the ones in the article do not, e.g.
[https://twitter.com/AmazonFCCarol](https://twitter.com/AmazonFCCarol)

------
erkose
This isn't limited to Amazon and Twitter. I see similar "pleasantries" posted
about Netflix on Reddit.

------
_zachs
I'm not an Amazon shill, look at my post history.

I don't understand all of this press. If you don't like your job working at
Amazon, quit. If the conditions are terrible, release proof to the public, so
other people don't even start working there.

Wash, rinse, repeat, and Amazon will either change the supposed working
conditions or hopefully fail.

Why do we need so much press on both sides for such a non-issue?

~~~
brynjolf
It shows you are a product of the valley. Some people. Can't just quit their
job, if they do their lives implode and does so fast.

------
Moodles
My brother actually worked in an Amazon warehouse for awhile and indeed it
sounds like a dreadful work environment (although I am comparatively spoiled
in software engineering and my brother hasn’t actually worked in similar jobs
in warehouses for other companies, so it’s hard to judge from his experience
alone if it’s an Amazon thing or just these kinds of jobs in general).

However (and I’m bracing for impact here), I don’t quite understand why
everyone hates on Amazon that much for this. They don’t force anyone to work
there. Indeed my brother found a new job after two years. It’s a bit like
getting mad at San Francisco landlords for charging so much: you can get mad
at them, but it’s really our fault for agreeing to pay. Or people getting mad
at how much athletes get paid. They get paid a lot because we agree we pay to
watch them. Amazon have shit working conditions because people agree to work
there for what they pay. All of these things are literally just trades. If we
don’t like it, don’t trade with them.

~~~
sireat
The answer lies in unequal bargaining power, public shaming/awareness is the
best we can do.

There's the added irony of Mr. Bezos publicly the richest man in the world
having his workers hold their pee.

Amazon will not care about its least protected workers until Amazon feels the
backlash in lowered sales.

If your locality has Amazon warehouse as the largest employer your options are
quite limited.

It is similar to having a coal mine in 19th century(or recycling center in
21st century China) being the largest employer. Nice to have a job at first,
but black lung is not so nice after a while.

The conditions do not have to be that bad, Costco has proven that.

Other FAANGs get less flack in this regard because they outsource all the
menial/routine jobs(Facebook and Google outsource a lot of horrible MTurk like
jobs) and they do not need as many of them.

PS I had 2 friends who worked at the Amazon UK Warehouse a few years back.
They only lasted 6 months before the repetitive injuries took their toll. And
it was pretty much impossible to have a day off.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
What do people actually propose as an alternative? By all accounts it seems
like the media examples of things such as 'peeing in bottles' are extremely
isolated incidents and not representative of normal working conditions.
Anywhere that has hundreds of thousands of employees - you're going to be able
to find some crazy isolated anecdotes.

The labor we're talking about is literally moving boxes. How much should a box
mover get paid? The US GDP per capita is currently around $53k. Our box movers
get about $13/hour which is $26k in wages alone. Imagine we went to some sort
of dystopic economy where we took every single penny anybody made producing
anything in this country and split it up according to what some person or
group felt was 'fair'. How much should a box mover get? That they already get
a 50% share is phenomenal in my opinion.

The mine analogy fails to consider that we're inching ever closer to a 0%
unemployment rate. We're currently in a labor market, which is probably a big
part of the reason why you can get $13/hour for moving boxes. And moving boxes
isn't going to hurt you. Give me two people - one that moves boxes 8 hours a
day and one that sits in a chair staring at a screen for 8 hours a day, and
I'd give you big odds that 20 years out that box mover is going to be in far
better shape, all other things being equal. Those first months and maybe even
years though are going to be tough, especially for people with soft bodies.

~~~
krapp
>The labor we're talking about is literally moving boxes. How much should a
box mover get paid?

The thing is, there is the value of a job to the employer, and the value of
employment to the employee.

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a full time employee, at the very
least, to be paid a living wage. Someone willing to commit that much of their
life to a company should be compensated enough to allow them to house and feed
themselves. Even if they're just "moving boxes."

~~~
TangoTrotFox
Think about what you're doing. I am asking for specific ideas and numbers, and
you're responding with homily. This is what I mean. You can't just critique
and moralize without offering specific workable solutions. The system we have
is not great. Who wouldn't want a world where everybody could just have more
or less whatever they want, live extremely comfortably, and for it to all be
completely sustainable? But that's also not realistic.

That's why I bring up the GDP and what it actually means. GDP is literally the
market rate of every single good and service produced in this nation. And that
only equals out to $50k per person. Our wealth really is in complete spite of
our economy -- that's without even getting into the fact that the GDP is
currently at record levels.

Various areas have tried now increasing the minimum wage to a level
approaching $15 with results that have been, at best, 'mixed'. The point is
that you cannot simply ignore economic realities when trying to create a
better life for people. This is specifically why social economic systems have
been tried numerous times, yet they seem to invariably result in literal
starvation. They're well intentioned, but out of touch with reality - and the
consequences for putting homily above reality tend to be a brief period of
feel good, followed by devastation.

~~~
Moodles
Indeed some would argue that a minimum wage can be quite damaging: for those
in society who are unproductive so as not to be worth $x an hour, a minimum
wage of >= $x actually definitely excludes them from the workforce. They’re
even more damned than before. Now I’m not sure either way if a minimum wage of
0 or $x is a good idea, but I would generally go with whatever the evidence
suggestions (and I havn’t looked into it). What I find really bizarre is why
yours and mine comments are being downvotes so much. Are we not contributing
to the discussion? Bit of an echo chamber around here.

~~~
krapp
> for those in society who are unproductive so as not to be worth $x an hour,
> a minimum wage of >= $x actually definitely excludes them from the workforce

Wages are not objectively determined on the basis of worker productivity. If
that were the case, wages would rise with productivity, but they tend not to.
Wages are a cost that employers want to keep as low as possible in all cases -
indeed, lower in cases of higher productivity, for a greater return on
investment.

A stower at Amazon can make their monthly salary for the company in minutes by
stowing a couple of XBoxes, yet they'll make the same 12.00/hr over a ten hour
shift regardless. The value that an employee brings to a company is _always
less_ than their compensation. Never more, and certainly never equal.

I'm not certain the actual workforce bears out the premise that a minimum wage
definitely prices workers out, since if it did, one would expect none of those
jobs to be filled, since no employer should want to pay a minimum wage to fill
them.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
I think your post is a clear example of why people seem to rage completely
inappropriately. I'm sure your example was rhetorical, but do you realize how
rhetorical it was? People seem to _vastly_ overestimate how much companies
make per item. Amazon's profit margin is currently at record breaking levels
-- of 4.79%. It historically averages around 2%. That means on e.g. $300 of
product (as a game console costs), they would show an average profit of
$6-$14. They need to move hundreds of thousands of dollars of product to pay
the yearly salary for a single blue-collar worker. A box mover is making
nowhere near his monthly compensation for moving a couple of XBoxes, even we
ignore the vast number of other expenses that go into the process and pretend
that 100% of the profit from those boxes can go straight to him.

As for minimum wage, businesses aren't identical -- even when they are. For
instance a McDonald's franchise in one area of a mostly homogenous part of
town can end up having a substantially different overall performance than one
in a different area in our mostly homogenous town. There's a large number of
variables that can be difficult to account for. And of course reality is
different businesses operating in different areas in heterogeneous towns. So
you don't eliminate all jobs of a given wage level - you just reduce the
demand for them by removing all companies that can't afford to pay those
wages.

------
downrightmike
Maybe they get a whole 5 minutepee break if they tweet when they clock in?

------
userbinator
I'm not even disturbed. I'm just very puzzled that there are people who would
think these messages were anything but pure PR propaganda. It's so blatantly
obvious to me.

...and it might just be my unfamiliarity, but "FC Ambassador" just reminds me
of football more than anything else. That part of their branding isn't
working, if they're trying to get into the minds of people who aren't familiar
with the company.

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
You’d be surprised what people will believe. I once commanded 11m Facebook
fans. It was surprisingly easy to convince a certain percentage of people to
do whatever you tell them to do. Some people are so gullible blind and stupid
that it makes you lose some faith in humanity when you see how easily
manipulated they can be.

------
Hysterisis
For some reason I get a Hyperion vibe from these tweets.

~~~
pas
Could you elaborate on this?

------
fipple
What would be really classic is if this was funded by Microsoft to sicken
Amazon’s white collar workforce and make them more easily poachable.

------
saudioger
This is very clearly dirty.

------
redleggedfrog
If you're taking _anything_ on twitter seriously, then there is a problem.

There is no signal in that noise.

------
ggm
1) did Amazon Australia use an intermediate labour hire agency or directly
employ it's new warehouse workers. And, how does this compare to ICT staff.

2) does or does not bezos oppose collective bargaining and unions?

3) is it true that German and possibly Italian state and federal labour laws
were successfully used to secure improved working conditions including the
right to collective bargaining?

4) has Amazon at any time, including the present used "fire the bottom two"
forms of ranked performance management?

------
chriselles
In Amazon’s early days(pre Twitter obviously) there were plenty of warehouse
workers who could have written far better tweets that sound less Borg
Collective-y

~~~
forapurpose
What do you mean? Are you saying that Amazon warehouse employees were treated
better back then? What makes you say that?

~~~
chriselles
It was pretty hard(physically) back then, even before simple tilt tray
sortation equipment.

Everything was manual.

And zero air conditioning in the first early generation distribution(now
fulfilment) centres.

Hiring, even in distribution(fulfilment) operations, had quite a high hiring
bar.

This was done to help develop the near future Human Resources capacity of the
company.

So we had an inordinately high % of Amazon Associate stock pickers with
undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Quite an eclectic and quirky bunch of quite over educated folks doing a lot of
manual labor trying to get the orders out the door and not drown in them.

It was a much much smaller company back then.

We were just trying to survive the never ending need to get customer orders
out te door and “average up” with each new hire.

Intellectual capacity per person was quite high, but our operational execution
would be far lower than what is achieved today.

We were failing/learning as we were going.

More exploration, less exploitation(in the process sense).

Exploitation as an employee wasn’t a problem in the early days from my
perspective.

We all knew what we were getting into. 100% commitment and acting like an
owner.

As headcount exploded, individual understanding of Amazon’s mission, ethos,
etc declined as it become more job-like, and less purposeful.

Growth rate compelled hiring more specialists and less multi-purpose
generalists....who could write non Borg Collective like Tweets.

I guess what I’m saying is the culture in the early days was more like a
pirate ship full of idiosyncratic individualist buccaneers than Borg.

------
floatingatoll
If someone wanted to prove how social networks can be used to manipulate the
stock market, this would be an excellent mechanism for doing so. Set up a
bunch of droid bots for your competitor and then watch the press eat them
alive.

------
praptak
Do they engage in conversations that would make it possible to tell a human
from a chatbot?

------
walrus01
Well that's not creepy at all. Tweets read like they're written by a PR
agency. Never known a near-minimum-wage warehouse worker who answers tweets
with turns of phrase like "On the contrary..."

~~~
beamatronic
How could any professional in this day and age think that this could possibly
work?

~~~
zeusk
The cheapest bid agency that Amazon would hire, clearly.

~~~
slowmovintarget
That'd be chatbots, Bob.

~~~
kalleboo
For this use case, Mechanical Turk seems cheaper

------
shadowtree
And they say AI will not destroy jobs. Automated astro turfing and PR. Cutting
out the middle-man, going straight from sender to consumer. No need for
"news".

------
krapp
>Their most frequent topics of conversation are how they get bathroom breaks,
the pleasant temperature of the warehouses, the excellent benefits and
suitable wages, friendly management and how the job isn’t monotonous or tiring
at all.

In other words, they took a list of everything everyone complains about, and
just decided to refute them point by point in the most condescendingly
Orwellian way possible, rather than fixing them, because "disagree and commit"
and I guess "frugality uber alles."

Sounds about like Amazon, yep.

~~~
darawk
...it sounds like they did fix them? People used to complain about not getting
bathroom breaks and unpleasant temperatures. Either they're lying, or they did
fix those things and are informing people of it.

~~~
krapp
>...it sounds like they did fix them?

Kind of to a point.

People get bathroom breaks, but those count against your rate, and people do
sometimes get written up for taking them, although that's as much a matter of
Amazon encouraging ruthlessness in management as anything. I know of one
anecdotal story of a worker who was apparently written up for the time it took
them to clean up after their own nosebleed.

In the FC where I work, the temperatures are definitely not pleasant, but HR
insists we simply aren't aware of how _perfect_ the climate control is.

I think it's one of those things that depends on where you work and who you
work under.

~~~
fcthrowaway
Somebody complained about the heat on the board* a while back, and the site
lead said it was up to code. They have their network-wide internal standards.
I forget what the ceiling for acceptable temperature is, but it gets pretty
hot in the summer, especially if you're doing inbound. I don't worry about
heat-related injuries or anything, but I wouldn't call it _comfortable_.

* What is it, Voice of the Associates? Something like that. It's a big whiteboard in the breakroom. You write down your login and a message for management/IT/HR and they write a response.

------
prolikewh0a
Why aren't these being banned from Twitter as "inauthentic"? They're clearly
propaganda tools and are coordinated disinformation campaigns.

Are there two sets of rules here?

------
tomnipotent
This is standard social media PR - fail to see what the issue is. Brand
ambassadors that promote the business have been common for a very long time.

Nothing to see here.

~~~
rectang
You're probably right. Maybe the distinction is that Amazon has gotten a lot
of bad press about its warehouses so the cognitive dissonance felt by the
observer is more pronounced.

------
dmead
This is really fascinating. I want to know about the culture of the person who
authorized this. They seemed to be lacking essential cultural norms for north
america.

Some questions I'd start asking are:

-Have they ever been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder or some type of high functioning autism?

-Are they from a third world country? Do they lack social norms we'd typically associate with people's attitudes about working in a factory?

-This this real life?

It's such a damaged artifact of modern de-industrialization. I really need to
know why this is a thing...

~~~
Applejinx
I diagnose Amazon itself, as a corporate person, with borderline personality
disorder :)

------
regul8
Ok, so who’s pointing a gun at anyone’s head and saying you HAVE TO WORK at an
Amazon fulfillment center? This isn’t slavery, it’s free will. Slavery, at
least in civilized countries, ended CENTURIES ago! I could delve deeper into
the psychology that leads to feelings of entrapment, but I won’t. As humans,
we need to get over ourselves. Work is hard. Life is hard. But it can be
rewarding too, so long as you stop playing the victim.

~~~
bgie
Economic freedom only starts at middle class and above. (Like when your family
can risk $300.000 for your online book store)

For the poor, you are free to choose your boss (and agree to obey thus sign
away your freedom) or sink deeper into poverty and eventually starve to
death...

Though there is no gun involved, I would not call this freedom.

But a kind of freedom which (thankfully) still exists is the freedom to reach
out to others. So why would you oppose people that use their freedom to push
back against obvious mistreatment (in this case by spreading the word)?

