
My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon - lladnar
http://qz.com/482080/dear-jeff-bezos-i-wish-you-had-asked-for-my-feedback-sooner/
======
lordnacho
Looking at this story (the wider Amazon story) it seems to me a lot of the
value is getting extracted from employees in a sort of creeping way.

So you might go to an interview where the manager says there's pager duty now
and again, but it's not too intense. You get on the job, and it's a whole lot
more intense than expected. You can't leave because you've just turned down a
bunch of other offers and moved towns. You adjust to delivering maybe 25% more
work hours than you thought. The company might do better hiring a colleague
for you, but they don't, so you lose out on free time while all the benefits
of your increased production goes to shareholders.

There's no recourse for this, and management knows it. They can hire people
and make them work harder than they've been told, as long as it's within the
range where a sensible number of people won't be looking for other jobs. At
the same time, you have great reputation (well maybe that's changing) so
there's a queue of fools applying to get in.

~~~
bechampion
I completely agree , also , Us as employees we need to learn when to say stop
, i know we all work hard and we want to be the an important asset. But
remember going the extra mile and getting recognition for it will only last
until the next downtime/problem which could be tomorrow.

~~~
pjc50
_Us as employees we need to learn when to say stop_

There's a word for this, beginning with "U", that a lot of people don't like.

~~~
serge2k
I really think a union at Amazon would probably fix a lot of issues, but would
cost most of the things about the culture that are actually good.

I do think the FC workers should be in a union. Absolutely.

~~~
boxy310
I really think that if Amazon is only surviving with a razor-thin profit
margin and they only do _that_ because they treat their employees like beat-up
warehouse equipment, then maybe it shouldn't exist as a company. My opinion of
them has really downgraded from a "Sears" of the internet (back when Sears
actually had a good reputation) towards more of a "Walmart" of the internet.

~~~
toothbrush
...and that's not to mention their systematic tax evasion. I agree that the
human cost is the bigger problem at the moment, but i really get worked up
about the multinationals earning massive profit and paying single-digit
percent taxes. That's another rant, though.

------
byuu
I have a four-week rotation on-call where I work. Pretty much the same
workload as discussed in the article with it. Calls and text messages at 3am,
can't be more than 15 minutes away from an internet connection (remote desktop
software on Android is a godsend.)

While it doesn't feel unbearable, and pays fairly well (at least for the area
I'm in), it definitely has _completely destroyed_ my sleep schedule. I no
longer have anything near a 24-hour clock: I'll sleep for, at most, 3-4 hours
at a time, usually twice a day. Those times change rapidly. As a result, many
times I'll need to take modafinil to stay awake through regular shifts; coffee
isn't nearly enough.

The part I dislike the most is that they moved me to a salaried position that
pays ~10% less without the on-call overtime bonus. On-call being just "free
labor" makes it much more frustrating.

"Why not quit?" is the usual: it pays too well, have a mortgage to pay, was
described as being less work than it turned out to be in the interview, etc.
But it really does make for a terrible work-life balance, and it's a shame
people are so eager to accept on-call as "just the way it is to have a good
middle-class job."

The thing I really don't understand is how they expect you to _always_ be
available, no matter what. The human body cannot physically go for seven days
with no sleep, at least not without a complete psychotic break-down. Yet
there's no sympathy or compassion for this simple biological fact by the
higher-ups if you ever sleep through a text message.

It would be so much more humane to just have two people on-call each week,
each covering a 12-hour window, with 8-hours (+1 lunch) overlapped by their
own work schedules. Yes, it's twice the rotation work, but it's 3 hours
outside work each day instead of 15, and you could keep a consistent sleep
schedule, and have a social life with times untethered to the internet.

Even better, hire one more person and cover the full 24-hours staffed. But I
get why that'll never happen, at least.

~~~
ErrantX
I am currently the head of a two person ops team, so we effectively share on-
call all the time. In reality as the buck stops with me I am on call
constantly. It's a drag and I really wish I hadn't been backed into this
corner (partly my fault, partly the company).

With that said; my Fiancee is a trainee nurse. She works three thirteen hour
shifts a week. Which totally destroys your sleep pattern. Working two thirteen
hour days in a row takes you out for a couple of days (she gets in at 9, has
about an hour to shower and eat and is in bed for a 5am start).

All of this for a wage which is about half of mine. And with the massive
responsibility that if she's tired and makes a mistake it's not a computer
that dies but an actual person.

Puts it in perspective.

~~~
davedx
Yeah, I am constantly amazed and terrified of the kinds of shifts doctors and
nurses do. I really do not understand how they manage to not make mistakes in
such an environment.

In Grey's Anatomy, you often see people taking a couple of hours sleep mid
shift; is this generally accurate?

~~~
rayiner
They do make mistakes. Hospital errors are the third leading cause of death in
the U.S.

~~~
exhilaration
That's... crazy! Where can I read more about this?

------
dboreham
If Jeff is reading this: hopefully it should be apparent that these stories of
constant out-of-hours calls indicate incompetent management. Note I'm not
talking about the "human" side of this (obviously that's pretty bad), but
rather this is just bad engineering, bad management, bad business. If you've
built software that generates constant support escalations when deployed, you
need to fix that software so it does not do so! If it turns out the software
is working just fine but the humans involved like to call people all the time,
then arrange for some people to be in the office during working hours (heck,
which continents does Amazon NOT have offices in??) to soothe them. Or perhaps
fire the people who like to make unnecessary support calls. My point: this all
indicates a very broken process and the process is the thing that needs to be
fixed, rather than "being nicer" about the fact that your developer needs to
be no more than 15 minutes from a WiFi network...

Disclosure: I'm part of a small team that runs a high-availability service,
without constant middle-of-the-night alerts..

Also, I am a long-time AMZN stock holder.

~~~
nodelessness
>> If you've built software that generates constant support escalations when
deployed, you need to fix that software so it does not do so!

It has been my observation that this is a conscious decision. If you can build
a culture where you can have people being willing to show up for work at all
the odd hours as the norm then you can afford poor software practices. In
places like these rushed software that has bugs but meets the majority of the
use cases well enough is what is expected. And you ARE expected to show up at
odd times to fix what breaks.

I mean, its not as if it costs the company more to have you come in late or
have you working at all the odd hours. They still pay you only what they pay
you. To hell with your work life balance - it's not as if doing this as had
any blowback in terms of attrition.

This person seems to have remained in Amazon for over 6 years - where they
likely created millions of dollars in value in return for whatever money they
made.

If you grow a backbone and turn down the calls at odd hours, you can expect to
receive blowback and unreasonable treatment from a direction you didn't
expect.

------
apexkid
The email from Jeff to his employees was impeccably unsatisfactory. It was a
sheer display of ignorance and rejection towards everything quoted and said.
However, no matter how much Jeff sticks to that attitude, it wouldn't change
the reality that Amazon is the most customer centric company on earth and the
most employee apathetic company on earth as well. It reflects in major
workplace elements like health schemes, holiday schemes (though employee have
official over 30 holidays they are not allowed to spend it without facing low
performance review), food benefits (specially in offices outside USA) etc.
Though Amazon claims that the leadership principle "Frugality" stands for
minimizing waste and not cheapness, one can't dismiss the latter definition.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>The email from Jeff to his employees was impeccably unsatisfactory. It was a
sheer display of ignorance and rejection towards everything quoted and said.

Duh? He was simply defending the company against potential HR lawsuits. You
can't really expect him to say, "yes I know we treat people like shit, and the
criticisms are valid, but..."

~~~
apexkid
I expected a more positive re-enforcement in form of something like "we shall
investigate the mentioned cases by NYtimes and try to reach out to those
people..."

Or

"even if its all false, lets take a step to change such perception of Amazon
if it exists.."

------
curiousfiddler
I'm quite surprised that of all the famous Silicon Valley people, and their
rallying behind Jeff Bezos, no one seems to believe that some part of these
many many stories could be true. Either that, or they seem to think that only
incompetent people are complaining. Therefore I must post part of my comment I
posted here [1]. One of my good friend, who was suffering at Amazon, is
thriving at Google. He's done amazingly well for himself and for Google in
past 1 year he's been there (& has been well recognized within the org). This
is not incompetence.

1\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10070115](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10070115)

~~~
joesmo
Honestly, it doesn't matter what SV people think. If they want to claim this
isn't true, they're essentially claiming a mass employee conspiracy. Let's
see, a mass employee conspiracy against Amazon or Amazon, a large company,
treating its workers like shit? Gee, I wonder which one is more plausible.

~~~
eternalban
Behold the Power of NYTimes.

Dear European publishing giant (you know who) weary of Google take note how it
is to be done when it is done in USA.

------
ohitsdom
> When our first daughter was about a month old, my husband was asked to go on
> a business trip. I imagine he could have turned that down, but I was
> insistent that he go so that his managers would not worry that his home life
> was impacting his work ethic. This is the Amazon way, after all. It was also
> one of the loneliest weeks of my life.

Amazon seems to have serious issues, but this one is on the employee/spouse.
If you don't protect your personal life/family time, how can you expect the
company to?

I have young kids so I come in to the office early and don't stay late too
often so I can be home with them. I know some upper management probably look
down on this, but expectations were clear when I was hired and my boss is OK
with it. I realize keeping this balance may disqualify me from ever becoming
VP of engineering, but I am more than OK with that if it means being a better
spouse and father.

~~~
omouse
> _so that his managers would not worry that his home life was impacting his
> work ethic_

It isn't on the employee/spouse; this is why you have managers that sometimes
have to tell employees to go home. We're so fearful of losing our jobs that we
bend over backwards for employers. This is what happens when employers have an
advantage.

> _I know some upper management probably look down on this_

So your boss is fine with it but your boss's boss may not be. At least you
aren't living in fear of losing your job.

> _I realize keeping this balance may disqualify me from ever becoming VP of
> engineering_

Why should it keep you from becoming VP of engineering? That's messed up.

~~~
ohitsdom
> this is why you have managers that sometimes have to tell employees to go
> home.

Good managers can spot when this is needed. But if the employee is telling the
manager that everything is fine and isn't showing signs of home stress, I
don't blame the manager.

> Why should it keep you from becoming VP of engineering? That's messed up.

I think most companies are going to value and reward those who put in extra
time consistently over those who don't.

------
bechampion
There's so many thing I feel when i read this: 1st: We're all in IT have been
on call at some given time , and it sucks , we all know this (since I'm not on
my 20s anymore i always ask in job interviews if i have to be on call.) 2nd:
Man that sucks ... i don't know how this person has given it more than 6
months of his life , just move on and get a different job if you dislike it.
3rd: Amazon is like any other big company , I've read similar stories about
google and MS , i wish the would pipe down and think smartly , proper hand
offs to people that are on call etc etc, there's no reason why someone have to
be called in the night and unable to take holidays ... come on , nobody is SO
important as we want to think.

~~~
cmdkeen
> just move on and get a different job if you dislike it Because they tie you
> in with money - your signing bonus and relocation expenses have to be
> partially repaid if you leave within the first two years.

An interesting question on the "what if there was a war and no-one came?" is
what would happen if Amazon could no longer hire the monstrous number of high
calibre new entrants it needs every year. Stories like this are effectively
huge advertising campaigns for every other tech company.

~~~
lrvick
I see people use this excuse all the time when I challenge them to quit a job
they hate and get one they love.

If you are good at what you do, another company will buy you out of any
financial strings a current employer has on you.

Let's assume the worst though and that by leaving you just eat the money. So
what? You can always make more money, but you can't get years of your life
back.

I find people in this industry are so often socalized into protecting a
commodity they can easily replace (money) by giving up one they can't (enjoyed
time)

~~~
pjc50
_by leaving you just eat the money_

This requires that you have a good line of credit or savings that you can use
to buy food, pay mortgage, etc. Most people don't have that.

~~~
lrvick
So? You dont have to pay them back immediatly. I have walked away with neither
credit or savings before. Thrown away stock and titles. There is never a good
reason to let someone abuse you and hold you hostage from living a life you
enjoy.

I swear this is like listening to people in abusive relationships with tunnel
vision. "If we break up I will be poor!"

The world didn't end any of the times I have walked away. Little contract work
and a few interviews can solve a wealth of financial problems in short order.

~~~
RogerL
Well, good for you. People have mortgages, they have children, and so on. Life
is not as neat and clean as HN likes to make it. People are not robots, and do
not always make perfectly rational decisions. Sometimes the 'easier' decision
to stay at a company where you have reasonable assurance of continued
employment and stability. I put easier in quotes because I recognize the truth
of what you say, but in general this ability to just flippantly change jobs is
a rare thing. No one was doing that in 2001, and people remember. You can jump
to a start up, the bankers or somebody makes a bad risk decision, the economy
is in turmoil, and in 8 months you are in foreclosure and trying to figure out
how to cloth and feed your kids. Meanwhile your mother is ailing and needs
your help, and your wife's father is wandering into traffic due to the
Alzheimers. Silly, weak humans, right? We HN readers are above all that.
Nothing bad will ever happen to us, so just throw caution to the wind.

~~~
lrvick
Quitting before having a new source of income is not something everyone can
do. I do acknowledge this.

Most of the people I talk to in these situations however are not shopping
around. Acting like they are trapped or a helpless victim. If someone is not
happy at a job they owe it to themselves, in spite of any drama going on in
their lives, to make time for interviews until they get the sucky job problem
solved.

By no means blow off family in need etc, but making time to get into a happy
work environment could mean less stress, enough or more money, and a much
easier time dealing with the difficult parts of life one can't change.

------
joshstrange
The Nightly Show (with Larry Wilmore) talked about this the other day and
while it is a comedy show I was a little surprised at what the guests said
about it. The "This isn't going to stop anyone from ordering from Amazon"
statements were to be expected and honestly, are any of us going to stop? But
the one thing they did touch on that I hadn't even considered was a general
sentiment of "They make boatloads of money and I'm supposed to feel sorry?".
Even in this article the wife mentions how they could afford therapy because
of the good money her husband was making at Amazon.

We, as a culture, don't seem to give a fuck about the conditions of the vast
majority of our workers ("Oh it's McD's? Of course the job sucks") and on the
show they even said "I don't see anyone getting all worked up about the
workers who MAKE the shit Amazon sells" which is a really good point. Now of
course people DO get worked up about it but I think it points out the
hypocrisy.

All of that to say I don't necessarily think that we shouldn't care how
someone is treated if they make lots of money but it's a very interesting
point.

~~~
exodust
And why are we hearing the story from the wife?

Should we presume the man had any editorial control?

"Honey, I think it will sound better if it comes from you."

My sympathy meter is barely flinching on this one sorry.

------
tsotha
>With warehouses around the globe, my husband would get paged to fix problems
in China in the middle of the night, in the UK in the wee hours of the
morning, and then in the Kentucky warehouse during work hours.

I worked at a company that wrote warehouse management software, and this
definitely isn't unique to Amazon. When your software has a serious problem
the company is losing a million dollars an hour, so they're not very
sympathetic to problems you may have standing in the way of a return to smooth
operations.

That business vies with games and HFT for the highest stress levels in
software development.

~~~
lordnacho
A million bucks an hour and there's a manager and two devs on it? If they had
three devs it would cut the workload by a third for the existing devs. And it
would cost 150K-200K or so (salary, benefits, tax), equivalent to 12 minutes
of waiting time.

Surely a guy with an MBA can figure out the cost/benefit of such a situation?

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
The MBA thinks "cheap as possible" \- so two devs and a dog sounds like a
reasonable budget, even if it means stuff doesn't quite work and employees get
broken.

The real poison is MBA culture. It's literally _insane_ in most normal human
senses.

~~~
weland
_This_. It's easy to shift the blame to faceless Amazon and pretend "the
company" is at fault.

It's not. The people who are running the company (and I'm not referring
strictly to top management here) are the ones with the blatant disregard for
their employees.

This is not a result of some inherent forces our Universe suddenly
concentrating over Amazon. They're the result of business decisions. A bunch
of people wearing suits have talked about this and agreed it's okay.

~~~
ucaetano
Tell me, if it was your money being invested, would you act differently?

~~~
lordnacho
Yes, this is a classic example of a skew risk. Cheap out, don't hire anyone,
and you'll probably save money. But your company is at risk of collapsing if
you get an event you hadn't planned for. Reputation can vanish fast if you
have an IT problem and customers can't get their stuff.

And of course this will never, ever come up in your case studies as a
recurring risk, because you're encouraged to read everything as a nice little
story in business school. The one or two cases where it does happen will just
be chalked up to some admonition about hiring better staff or some other BS.

~~~
ucaetano
"Cheap out, don't hire anyone, and you'll probably save money. But your
company is at risk of collapsing if you get an event you hadn't planned for.
Reputation can vanish fast if you have an IT problem and customers can't get
their stuff."

Are you implying that Bezos and Amazon's investors are just dumb and don't
think about the long term implications of their hiring practices?

You can always short Amazon's stock if you're that confident.

Maybe they did think about it all, and reached the conclusion that this
culture and hiring practices will have a better return on the long term.

It is far too easy to say what other people should do with their money...

------
Tloewald
My theory as to Amazon's valuation is that investors assume at some point
Amazon will get a stranglehold on retail (giving it both monopoly and
monopsony positions in many markets) and then extract rents on a staggering
scale until regulators eventually deal with it (which might be never).

But Amazon's experiments with treating workers as commodity parts in a machine
-- which we discover also applies to the white-collar folks (so _now_ we
care?) -- is a whole other angle. Instead of merely planning to cash in on a
prospective illegal monopoly, it's also working on making life miserable for
all workers. So there's that too.

------
arcticbull
I'd like to be the first to welcome Amazon to 10:00pm Silicon Valley Time
("the company is a mess").

[https://medium.com/backchannel/how-the-tech-press-forces-
a-n...](https://medium.com/backchannel/how-the-tech-press-forces-a-narrative-
on-companies-it-covers-5f89fdb7793e)

It's right on schedule, we just wrapped up 8:00pm ("they're never going to
make any money") in the markets, and fast-forwarded through 9:00pm.

~~~
aidos
I don't know about any of that. I can see why that was written to describe the
trajectories of some SV companies - it doesn't seem to fit with Amazon at all,
to me anyway.

------
kyllo
I work for a company in Seattle whose technical employees are getting picked
off by Amazon. Amazon offers probably 25-50% more in salary for similar
positions, and we also can't compete with their equity offering. But in
exchange for all that money, you have to work probably at least 50% more
hours, tolerate weaker boundaries between your work life and personal life,
and deal with a whole lot more stress. It's a trade-off that some people are
willing to make, and others aren't. But what really sucks is that the real
estate market is getting to the point where you need an Amazon salary just to
afford a house in Seattle.

~~~
mikestew
Well, if your SDETs or test managers are getting picked off, my address is in
my profile. :-) I've already told Amazon to quit calling, if that helps.

------
happywolf
I do believe there must be something wrong at a significant enough scale to
warrant NYT's attention. There are always outliners (i.e. unhappy and stressed
out staff) in every company, the question is how big is the population.

~~~
trhway
>I do believe there must be something wrong at a significant enough scale to
warrant NYT's attention.

it may be "wrong" from the POV of NYT or other tech outsiders. What i've over
the years understood from various friends/acquaintances is that it is not
"something wrong", it is just the "normal" mode of how whole AMZN operates.
People going there know it (and if they don't - not checking Glassdoor is
theirs fault, not AMZN's) - and, for example, that is the reason i didn't go
there (while i love escalations, emergencies, etc..., i don't like
backstabbing, tricks they play with your salary/bonuses and other details)

~~~
happywolf
Your argument sounds like it is not something wrong to commit crime in a
crime-ridden neighborhood, and it is the victim's fault since that person
didn't read news or does their due diligence.

Interesting :)

~~~
trhway
there is a difference between crime and contract. You enter contract at will
in exchange for something, and not doing due diligence is your fault. You may
also look at the notion of exempt employee - some actions would be illegal if
done to non-exempt employees while ok to be done to exempt.

~~~
happywolf
I do understand where you are from and I agree one will need to be aware what
they are signing up for. A lot of times companies pay extra for the hardship,
and I will say this is fair and square.

However there is a limit on what a company can do to its employees, even
employees signed contracts. Some behaviors like making people cry are
bordering harassment, and these are against the law in most countries.

------
andrewguenther
At Amazon, unless you're on a PIP (probation), you can change teams after a
year and your manager cannot stop you. This is possibly one of the best ways
to get management's attention. If an org is bleeding out people, it is clear
that something is wrong. Why not switch teams?

~~~
trhway
>you can change teams after a year and your manager cannot stop you.

i remember how at Sun a good recommendation from a manager about his employee
wanting to switch to another team was read as "i'd be happy to dump that guy
to somebody else" and so-so was read as "God, don't let him to be taken from
me" :)

------
norea-armozel
It's these sort of articles that questions my use of Amazon for my retail
purchases. Not just from the ethical standpoint of overworking people but also
from the practical effect of getting most of what I want on time at a price I
want because I can't say that Amazon today really does a good job on that
front either.

For example, if I want to purchase electronic components for my PC New Egg
still beats them every time in price and delivery times (imo). Anytime I buy
something like a stick of RAM from Amazon I tend to get burned on the delivery
time (unless I use Prime) or the price (certain third party retailers just run
out of stock). So, I never trust Amazon with my component purchases.

Similarly, I'm finding their clothing section is getting more parse every year
for plus sized clothing so I wind up buying socks from Sock Dreams, most
outfits from Torrid (casual/off-work) or Lane Bryant (office-friendly/semi-
formal) or some other retailer.

Oddly, Amazon still beats Zappos on large size shoes (Zappos use to be the
goto retailer but not anymore they seem to have culled most of their stock of
non-fetish large size shoes).

All this article and the NYT article just convinces me further that Amazon may
become my retailer of last resort since all the thumbscrews in the world isn't
worth anything if it comes down to a meager savings in price or time.

~~~
mrbill
You know that Amazon owns Zappos, right?

------
AdamN
I guess I thought this was common knowledge. I've stayed away from working at
Amazon for a while now based on stories from other tech people I know. It's
not a top-tier place to work outside of AWS and the opportunities aren't
really that great either. Maybe the pay is good? I've heard it's not
competitive even.

I know how it is though - people want the stamp of a top company on their
resume. They also want to succeed.

I blame the husband just a tiny bit - for not saying 'no' earlier. Ironically,
he might not have been fired if he put a line in the sand earlier. He probably
did underperform because he wasn't managing the manager's expectations
properly.

Of course, he might have gotten fired anyway - nobody will ever know.

Work is tough - and unfortunately companies like Amazon aren't "buffering the
core" very well. These are engineers who might not be good at managing
expectations or managing or leadership even - but why stress them out if
they're otherwise super-useful to the company? Employees who can't handle this
stress but are otherwise valuable should be cradled and they'll perform better
for longer - pretty simple really.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
>people want the stamp of a top company on their resume.

I hate how valuable stuff like this is to hiring managers. If you asked me to
pick between the guy who spent a year at Amazon or the guy who ran his own
startup soup-to-nuts for a year, I'd rather go with the startup guy. Its crazy
that we have this informal pseudo-classist system of "people who worked at AAA
shops" vs "nobodies." Are HR departments and hiring managers really this
dense?

------
sudoherethere
I am glad that finally Amazon's work environment is finally getting exposure.
We had a few colleagues who worked for Amazon and they called it a sweatshop
of IT world. Because of them, I have turned down recruiters from Amazon many
times and stopped my friends from applying there.

Hopefully, Amazon will change their workplace policies now or suffer stock
price decline when smart people stop applying there.

------
graniter
Unless you really have no other option to support yourself, you really need to
change jobs (or departments, etc.) if your job is requiring you to get
anywhere close to needing therapy. Having learned this the hard way, I just
don't think it's worth trying to hold on for it to get better. Be willing to
move on. You'll likely find another job and make the same amount. Plus job
hopping often is helpful in your career. And when your job is going well, save
up some money so that when (yes, "when", not "if") it goes bad you have some
funds to drawn on so that leaving isn't a financial burden and you can support
yourself when you are between jobs. After 20 years in the field, I've just
come to recognize that just how it is. Plan for it. And there's no reason to
put yourself through undue mental or family anguish because you are afraid of
making less (when you probably wouldn't anyway).

------
pawelkomarnicki
Amazon delivers lots of value to customers, and there're only two ways to do
that: 1) spend shitload of money on processes and people, or 2) squeeze
employees as much as possible. Sadly the 2nd option is much cheaper and
"people are expendable anyway" these days.

------
FatalErrorr
Why. Why oh why didn't he quit? This sounds AWFUL.

~~~
abajaj2280
Honestly, I ask myself this all the time when I read horror stories from
employees at tech companies. Just leave!

~~~
bsder
Tech jobs aren't as liquid as you think.

Sure, he can move to another job that has the same kind of stupid demands.
However, finding a job that _doesn 't_ have those kinds of demands isn't so
easy. Now, let's add in the stress of uprooting your family as well as a new
job where you have to prove yourself (so you're probably going to be spending
the same number of hours, anyway, for a while) and it's not so obvious a
choice.

The real solution is for labor laws to start biting and saying that salaried
workers are to be compensated after 40 hours and have it enforced. Once you
have to pay a salaried worker overtime and a shift differential, they'll hire
another worker.

------
xornor
I am now quite happy that I failed in the Amazon recruitment process.

Their guidance said that I should prepare couple of weeks for the interview.
For me they gave one weekend which I had to use for the family event. Perhaps
I was not engaged enough after all.

~~~
hydrogen18
It became very obvious in the interview process that there was nothing to get
excited about company wise. They didn't tell me anything about the company, at
all. Just a bunch of questions anyone with a textbook could answer. Except for
some reason I had to write code on a whiteboard. As if laptop's are a scarce
resource and can't be spared for an interview.

The really funny part was when I started asking the HR person about the teams
I was interviewing with. I asked some really basic questions and she had no
clue how to answer them. Just easy stuff like "Why does this team have more
than the other team?" and "How long has this team been together, how long have
they worked on this project?". She had no idea how to answer.

They didn't even make me a offer. But what is really funny is every few months
I get a request to come interview again for a totally unrelated position.

------
orm
Some things about this article bother me. It starts by describing what is
objectively a problem ascribable to Amazon itself ( letting on-call rotations
reach the 3 week mark is terrible ), and then descends to pure appeal to
emotion.

Here's what I mean: the only thing that seemed an actual problem, to judge
from the article, is that the on-call rotations became once every three weeks.
Perhaps the length of the on-call, or the number of on-call people at the same
time is another problem Amazon could address in this case.

On-call in general (24/7 availability for some period of time), is not
exclusively an Amazon thing. I'm surprised the writer tried to portray it so.

After that, the author stops giving reasons. For example, the decision to go
on a business trip after 4 weeks of their daughter being born seems to have
been their own, not Amazon's. " I imagine he could have turned that down, but
I was insistent that he go so". She did not explain if they felt coerced by
Amazon and how.

Same thing goes for the hotel they cancelled a day early. How did that happen
and why? The writer did not thing this was important enough somehow, but I
think it is.

Normally I'd call this sloppiness, but considering the author is a
professional and this had to get proof-read, it may just be the author is
being a bit disingenuous as well.

~~~
enraged_camel
Did we read the same article? They went on a weekend trip in the summer, had
to cancel their hotel and come back a day early, and the guy still got an
earful from his manager the next day about how he isn't delivering. I don't
see how this is "pure appeal to emotion".

Also, a 15-minute max window for responding to pagers? Fucking hilarious. If
these people were doctors getting called to the ER, I would understand. But
this is a fucking online retail business! Furthermore, what the fuck happened
to the concept of having backups on call so that if one person can't respond
(i.e. they are driving), someone else can? This is a business decision by
Amazon, and also isn't "pure appeal to emotion".

~~~
orm2
(same as orm), just my settings don't allow me to reply.

"Did we read the same article? They went on a weekend trip in the summer, had
to cancel their hotel and come back a day early, and the guy still got an
earful from his manager the next day about how he isn't delivering. I don't
see how this is "pure appeal to emotion"."

She says: A happended. The next day B happened. She puts the two sentences
together to imply cause and effect. But she she does not explicitly say 'A
caused B', and I believe this is for a reason. All she does is to suggest it.
To me, as an engineer, the fact she only suggests it is one of those things
about the writing that bothers me. She did not explain what had been happening
leading up to this nor the reasons the management gave.

Note, I worked for Amazon for a couple of years. While I have to admit my team
was really on the lucky side in terms of on-call while I was there. I am
familiar with some of these policies. The 15 minute rule is just the time it
takes for you to say 'I'm awake and I'm looking at the ticket'. You don't have
to solve it. They use this deadline as a way to see if they should reach-out
to a secondary on-call, as a backup.

------
exodust
"Needed therapy" is such a click-baity deliberate inflation of drama before we
even get to the story. That alone caused me to look for a counter-argument,
from someone who worked there, not their wife, or colleague, but an actual
employee.

(warning, no drama, no neglected infants, no angry wives)

[https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2015/08/16/Working-a...](https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2015/08/16/Working-
at-Amazon)

And btw, the claim that Amazon "encourages employees to tear apart one
another's ideas" is also dramatic. Actually, I've seen the opposite happen
where nobody says anything "nasty" about anyone's ideas for fear of deviating
from the "positive work culture". Bad ideas can go a long way before they're
spotted if you're not willing to speak up.

Tearing shreds sounds to me like an opportunity to cut through the bullshit.
It doesn't need to be personal, the mission is bigger than the individual. Ego
should be put aside. Maybe I should try working at Amazon.

A manager at my former workplace from years ago, let's call it News Corp, said
to the technical team of 30 in a meeting once "the reason we are here [at the
company] is to make each other look good". I was a pretty cheeky dev back
then, but that day I didn't say anything. In my mind I thought "no, we're here
to make the online products and services look good".

You can invest time worrying about how things look or how things are, not
both. Too much positivity or eggshell-treading or dancing around the truth and
high-fiving when discussing or evaluating ideas can be an invisible poison for
any business.

------
jroseattle
I'd like to understand more about the systems that require pager duty?

I don't work for AMZN, but as I understand it the internal infrastructure is
highly service-ified, so (ideally) pager-duty activities are hopefully
somewhat contained. And, I would imagine those issues relates to less-mature
systems in play.

Which leads me to my impression: it's 2015, AMZN has been around for 20 years,
and their warehouses weren't just propped up yesterday. If pager duty involves
looking into more mature systems interacting with others, then those
activities will only get worse over time. It becomes maintenance nightmare
land, something you can only do by churning through people.

AMZN has some hard engineering problems to solve, but I wouldn't label it a
top-notch engineering organization.

------
annasaru
An educated professional's capacity to endure pain, and inability to recognize
implicit humiliation (i.e. your family is way less important than this job) as
measured in this article, are about 6 years.

For six years he put up with this abuse of power over him. He could have
walked out after six months but he chose not to. How can Amazon be faulted for
the employee's indecision.

He's financially benefited by those 6 years of being an absent father. The
financial gains are very concrete and measurable, and comforting. The same
can't be said of the intangible - like playing with your infant child, and
caring for them - can't put a value on them but that's a huge loss.

------
gerbilly
I remember a time when Sunday shopping was a topic being debated in Canada.
(At the time there was a law mandating that most stores be closed on Sundays.)

Now stores are open 7 days a week and sometimes 24 hours a day.

Whenever I see a store post that it's open 24hrs/day all I can think about is
what that does to the employees: because for most people, overnight shifts
destroy your life.

I wonder if we wouldn't better off as a society having regular business hours
and getting back that one day a week off.

It's our fault as workers, really. Because we lack solidarity, workers are in
a race to the bottom to see who can work longer hours for less.

------
yitchelle
For the wife (and mum) who wrote this letter, I can feel her pain. Especially
relocating to place where emotional support is low and life is lonely. We
relocated to Germany from Australia, and it was a few hard years at the start.
There are many reasons why we relocated, and some of those are similar to the
author. We were lucky that we managed to see through the hard years and found
our way. Now we are enjoying life in Germany. It sounds like the family is
also on their way as well.

For me, this article is not necessary about Amazon workplace practice.
However, it certainly did not help at all.

------
outside1234
Ok, so Amazon is a turd of an employer.

The question in my mind is how do we stop this abuse?

Do we (as workers) put out a letter that asks for net average 40 hour weeks
and ask companies to sign on to it?

Do we keep naming and shaming like this? Or?

~~~
kelukelugames
I turned down my Amazon offer saying you are stock vesting plan is unfair. The
recruiter's comeback was "We are all leaders here!"

At least I tried.

~~~
outside1234
what was unfair about it?

~~~
kelukelugames
Everyone else vests roughly 25% every year over 4 years.

Amazon was something like 15%/15%/30%/30% over 4. It's not very pro employee.

------
backtoyoujim
The thing is ... at companies that I was the bane of because of my lack of
technological ability past lithic ... every one made fum of me working 10
hours at work and two or three at home at night and the weekends.

So now ... Amazon has created a culture where everyone feels like the guy that
no one wants to work with ... they have found a way to make that exploitable
among some pretty smart people.

And everyone looks around and lifts their shoulders and shows their palms
because the US work experience sucks.

Amazon reads like the zenith of the suck.

------
forgotAgain
If you ever wonder why companies prefer younger employees this story explains
a lot. After you've been taken advantage of enough you just don't accept it
anymore.

------
aagha
I can't help but wonder if all the negative press Amazon is getting is just
because of "a few bad applies".

Of course there's selection bias, but the reviews for Amazon on Glassdoor [0]
don't seem that bad compared to other companies.

0 - [http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Amazon-com-
Reviews-E6036.ht...](http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Amazon-com-
Reviews-E6036.htm)

------
iandanforth
Serious question, isn't this what unions are for?

~~~
netfire
Unions seem like a good solution on the surface, but it seems like many unions
quickly degrade into organizations focused more on self-preservation and
expansion than looking after the interests and well-being of their members.

It seems like it also gets ugly, with unions not only striking for better pay
and benefits, but also protesting and demeaning individuals and companies who
aren't using union labor or putting in policies that work must be done by
union workers that could easily be done by others at a much cheaper rate or
with much less effort. ("Let's get a union electrician in here to run this
extension cord")

I'd be more in favor of unions if it were done completely on a volunteer and
donation basis, instead of with mandatory dues, paid leadership and policies
that demonize those who choose not to join the union or people that choose not
to use union labor.

An alternate solution would be to put laws in place that stops employers from
preventing their employees from voicing concerns about policies and treatment
publicly. (while still allowing employers to protect intellectual property
rights) I'd argue that all these stories about the treatment of former Amazon
employees will have more of an effect on Amazon, its hiring efforts and its
policies than having a union threatening a strike would.

------
c_y
Welcome to IT and Prod Support. Unfortunately, That's how it is in many
companies , with much lesser pay.

------
dominotw
Can someone tell me why people continue to work for a toxic place if they are
being abused?

------
wingerlang
> He had been under so much stress that after the meeting I asked him to go to
> therapy.

It is not clear why he needed therapy from this article. Just because of the
stressful job?

------
enraged_camel
Looks like Amazon apologists are flagging the submission in an attempt to take
it off the front-page.

------
wobbleblob
Somewhat off topic perhaps, but what exactly does therapy do? Has anyone here
had therapy? If so, can they explain how talking to a psychologist cures a
medical condition? Is it significantly different from talking to a priest or a
faith healer?

~~~
lawstudent2
> Is it significantly different from talking to a priest or a faith healer?

* Faith healers are priests aren't trained in the myriad forms of double blind tested, peer reviewed techniques that can be used to help manage or reduce stress and emotional pain.

* Therapists don't just listen. They talk. They make suggestions - ranging from everything from common sense things that may have more weight because they are coming from a medical professional, to recommending aggressive routines and techniques (meditation, diet change, medication, group therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, changes in routine, sleep patterns) that require the active participation of the patient and, over time, are shown, in double blind, peer reviewed studies, to have positive impacts. You aren't just paying some asshole to listen to you.

* A therapist, with years of training, is often able to easily identify stressors of which you are unaware, and separate out stressors that are present in the environment (your shitty, shitty job) vs. the result of old emotional trauma (e.g. horrible parenting) vs. personality disorders (borderline personality, OCD) vs. mental illness (schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder) and can figure out a plan tailored to your needs. This may involve a combination of different types of therapy (there are many, and many types of 'talk' therapy actually are vastly different when viewed from the inside), in some instances, medication, and in most instances, figuring out how to make changes in your life to reduce stressors.

A therapist isn't just a black hole into whom you throw your problems. A
therapist is a medical expert who has deep knowledge of personality and mental
disorders, knowledge of pro-active methods of combating both, and acts as a
medically informed, objective 'life coach.'

I mean, damn, what does a physical trainer do if not just talk to you? Why not
go to a priest or faith healer to get your calves real swole? What does a
financial advisor do if not just talk to you? Why not go to a priest or a
faith healer to manage your 401k?

The ignorance displayed at this:

> If so, can they explain how talking to a psychologist cures a medical
> condition?

Is just sort of flabbergasting. Not all the reasons you go to a therapist are
for medical conditions; many therapists are MDs; therapy doesn't just consist
of talking to someone; like any other field, it has tons of study and many
experts, people who know better than you do, and quite often it helps to talk
to an expert.

If that comes off as harsh - I apologize - especially if you are someone who
is on the fence about therapy. I sincerely suspect, however, you are not, and,
instead, just assaulting the idea that therapy is even remotely a worthwhile
pursuit. It is.

~~~
wobbleblob
Well, lawstudent2, I think you read more into my question than I intended. I
really was, and still am, not sure what therapy is, and what makes it
different from talking to someone else whose job it is to listen to your
complaints and make you feel better, such as a priest.

You may complain about ignorance, but most people don't visit a therapist, I
don't know why you assume everyone should be familiar with it. And then, what
kind of therapy is based on science and what isn't? People refer to the
treatment from their psychoanalyst, their regression therapist, their
hypnotherapist, their chiropractor as therapy too, and these are no more
science based than a priest.

~~~
DanBC
You could have looked for evidence before asking your dismissive question.

------
nso95
Small team writing unstable software, of course there's going to be a lot of
pages.

~~~
cmdkeen
Small team constantly frazzled by being on call in an abusive working
environment - no wonder they're writing unstable software.

I'd far rather get 30 hours of productive coding out of a rested, happy and
motivated employee than 60 out of an exhausted and oppressed one.

------
madaxe_again
On call once every three weeks? Oh fucking noes!

Out of hours support sucks, but yes, the reality is that you get paged, and
you have to deal with things within SLA. It's hard, it's wearing, but one week
out of every four is hardly intense.

I was on call for five years. It nearly broke me - but this article is just
_whining_. Why take such a role if it's such a problem? It sounds more like
his wife bashing him every time he had to do OOO work is what broke him.

~~~
zzleeper
It depends how often you get the pager, no?

If your calls were often at 4am and you had to work a normal schedule, it
certainly does no good. Also, you are saying that nearly _broke_ you, as if
it's a badge of pride or something good...

~~~
vacri
I did on-call for a sleep medicine company. My calls were specifically during
sleep hours (when the equipment is in use is when it has problems). The calls
were rarely short, and I had no direct link to the equipment to run my own
tests - it was always trying to troubleshoot via a usually non-techinical
enduser. It was a great night if you received zero calls. I have my on-call
battle-scars.

So this being said, I agree with the GP - on-call sucks, but one week in four
is not that bad. One week in five and it's fairly breezy. One week in three or
less and it's pretty bad - you basically stop having an external life
altogether. Like the GP, I also thought the article was a bit whiny. Yes,
there were some truths in it, but whines like "omg, there is crunch time" make
the author sound pretty self-entitled. Another whine was "not working for the
same boss that hired him"... after _six years_ in the company. Who could take
such a complaint seriously? One of the more valid problems listed is the
shifting of priorities every two weeks. That stuff is a killer - to morale, to
progress, to development, to pretty much everything.

