
Amazon: Staff told to work overtime as virus spikes demand - djhaskin987
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51921916
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jrd259
Amazon engineer here. Many of us (engineers, data analysts, fulfillment center
associates) are working more hours to cope with extremely high demand coupled
with border closures and extra delays in the road system. This is, I think,
good for humanity. If your local store is out of stuff, maybe Amazon can bring
it to you, and in any case you don't have to leave your house.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Are engineers and other traditionally exempt status workers being compensated
for these additional hours?

~~~
zdragnar
When I interviewed there (approx. 2012), I asked every person I met with about
how many hours, on average, they worked per week.

Every single one of them gave me a non-answer; most simply answered a
different question I didnt ask.

If there isn't an expectation of a consistent 40 hour work week, then it is
highly unlikely that there will be any bonus for working extra during this
time period.

~~~
thesuperbigfrog
I worked there as a Software Development Engineer (SDE) from 2007 to 2013.

At that time, SDEs were paid on a salary basis with additional compensation in
restricted stock units (RSUs) that vested in the future based on how long you
stayed with the company a.k.a "golden handcuffs".

SDEs worked about 50 to 60 hours during most of the year, 70 to 90 hours
during an oncall / pager duty week, and 70 to 100 hours during Q4, the holiday
season leading up to Christmas.

The pay was really good, the people I worked with were brilliant and amazing,
and it was exciting to build awesome systems and see them make a difference in
the company's operations and capabilities. At the same time, it starts to wear
on you and your family after a few years. I am glad I did it, but it's not the
type of job most people can do for more than a few years due to how much it
requires and impacts your life.

~~~
amzn-throw
AWS here. This varies wildly by team and doesn't match my experience at all.
I've been on 3 teams over 6 years in 3 locations (though none in US so maybe
this is why? #AmericaNo) on aws and retail.

I don't know anyone that works 60 hours regularly. 50, maybe - you know
including lunch.

Oncall for the vast majority of teams isn't extra hours, just strange hours.
But if you get paged at night people cover for you the next day.

I didn't work on a Q4 peak team but your math is psychotic. 100 hours is 14
hours a day 7 days a week? If you went through that I'm sorry, I suspected our
Ops org is psychotic, but that is too much. Still, i really have to wonder if
you are exaggerating since the other 2 numbers were dramatically. Or you got
an Outlier team.

My org crunches for reinvent, sure, but what company wouldn't with a massive
yearly conference where/when most of the products are launched.

~~~
thesuperbigfrog
I was in Seattle the whole time.

It was common on the team I was on to work about 10 hours a day in office and
then go home and have meetings with our sister team in India and some follow-
up work with them. The sister team was working on standing up an automation
service to reduce some of our "manual" work and help reduce the oncall burden,
but it took nearly a year and a half for that to happen.

>> if you get paged at night people cover for you the next day.

That would have been nice. We initially had to provide 24-7 coverage for a
week during our oncall rotation. After the sister team in India stood up, it
turned into 12 hours a day and a hand off to an oncall engineer in India who
would cover the next 12 hours. Both "tag team" engineers would cover a week
together for the oncall rotation.

>> I didn't work on a Q4 peak team but your math is psychotic. 100 hours is 14
hours a day 7 days a week?

Our service directly supported order fulfillment. Therefore it HAD to stay up
at all costs, especially during Q4.

Granted 100 hours did not happen often, it was usually closer to 70 and mainly
consisted of getting everything ready for Q4 and load testing it all to make
sure that it was solid for the tremendous holiday volume. Remember, this was
BEFORE the retail website had fully transitioned to elastic scaling. All the
supporting layers and configuration were pre-scaled manually based on the
previous year's peaks plus the expected increase.

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duxup
Amazon is a key part of the general system of logistics of getting stuff to
people now.

So yeah it would make sense that OT is going to be a thing.

The article is sort of wishy washy on exactly what is going on though, it
talks about voluntary and "condition of employment" OT.

I've worked in industries where OT was celebrated by employees and a lack of
it was actually seen as a huge problem. I'm not 100% sure everyone's response
to OT will be identical.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" I've worked in industries where OT was celebrated by employees and a lack
of it was actually seen as a huge problem."_

The only way this makes sense to me is if employees are directly or indirectly
compensated for working overtime.

If they're not, then that kind of attitude is pathological.

~~~
Turing_Machine
Hourly employees in the United States are paid at a rate of 150% their base
rate for every hour after 40.

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losvedir
Ha, I had a completely opposite connotation to the headline and was briefly
confused when I read the body. In the couple of large factories I know of
operators, mechanics, and others generally are thrilled with overtime, so I
thought this was supposed to be a good thing. But the article body spun it
very negatively. I wonder what the sentiment is in the factories there. Maybe
it's different in the UK.

~~~
frostwhale
Had the same reaction. Its forced overtime so maybe they'll complain? But with
the virus hitting, if correct safety precautions are taken the extra cash
seems like a good thing? We'd need to actually talk to Amazon workers for
their opinions. Also important how Amazon responds if a worker doesn't want
the overtime.

~~~
noir_lord
As it currently stands the UK still has the EU 48hr working week so you can
opt out of working more than 48hrs and in theory not be punished for it, in
practice enforcing that has been hit and miss over the years with punitive
measures been hard to prove at times.

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ISL
Giving logistics line-workers priority just behind healthcare workers in
testing and PPE would make sense.

We need logistics infrastructure to stay up, and we need the general populace
to trust it.

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rayvd
Amazon is hiring 100,000 in the US to meet the demand and increasing wages to
help with retention.

Last I checked, employment and OT was voluntary.

This is all good stuff.

~~~
toomuchtodo
If your state has expanded unemployment to cover COVID-19, and your
unemployment would be more than what Amazon would pay (or even the same or
less, if you don't want to subject yourself to Amazon Fulfillment working
conditions), it makes more sense to collect the unemployment for as long as
the government will provide it (state unemployment coffers are somewhat solid
at the moment, and the federal government is going to backstop them similar to
the 2008 GFC if Congress can get the emergency bill passed).

I don't have a comprehensive list at the moment, but I do know Washington
state, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Maryland, and California have expanded
benefits. If you or someone you know is impacted, check with your local
state's governor's office and the Dept of Unemployment and file _as soon as
you 're eligible_, including food stamps and Medicaid if also eligible for
those programs.

~~~
inetknght
You have no idea how unemployment works, do you?

Unemployment requires that you're actively seeking work. You're no longer
eligible for unemployment if you turn down an offer.

~~~
toomuchtodo
[removed in lieu of FireBeyond's superior sibling comment]

~~~
otterley
> I suggest applying for airline roles first you qualify for (if you prefer
> unemployment to working a suboptimal job at Amazon), at least until they're
> nationalized in the next 8 weeks.

Did I miss a news article about this? Or are you just speculating?

Moreover, airline roles are going to be the last to open up. It's going to
take a long time for airlines to return to their former capacity, and their
employees who were furloughed or laid off are going to be recalled first.

------
threatofrain
At this point Amazon's logistical performance is a matter of national
security. The degree to which Amazon hiccups is the degree to which the nation
is unnerved.

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glup
I am worried about this: Long hours means stress and stress means
susceptibility to illness. And besides the first-order problem of these
workers getting sick, I really don't think we want to take down an
increasingly important part of the supply chain for tons of people.

~~~
dumbfounder
Think of all the people that are worried about getting food and other
necessities? My family is in quarantine and we couldn't get Peapod to come for
a week so we ordered some emergency food on Amazon and then were able to get
Whole Foods delivery (after a lot of trying) to come say day. Now I can sleep
better at night until we start running out again. It's all a balancing act,
but I am very thankful that Amazon is still out there delivering to the
masses. I think it would be a much worse situation without them.

~~~
Moru
Here in Sweden we have food delivery from most stores since a long time.
Mostly meant for older people but becoming mainstream lately. But now private
people started announcing free help with shopping on Facebook and similar.
Just came home from helping a neighbour with shopping. We can manage just fine
without amazon if we just help each other now and then.

~~~
TulliusCicero
> we can manage JUST FINE without Amazon, simply by using other retailers

I mean, okay? You know groceries and other goods at other shops _also_ require
workers to work, right?

You could replace "Amazon" with any other grocery delivery company, works the
same.

~~~
dumbfounder
We ordered Peapod but the first availability was one week out. We were able to
get Amazon to deliver Whole Foods within a few hours. Yes, we can substitute
any retailer for Amazon, but people like to pick on Amazon much more than
other retailers, so I felt the need to back them because they continue to
execute at a high level even now.

~~~
TulliusCicero
I was responding to the other guy, who seemed to be bragging about being able
to avoid Amazon, through the power of using other retailers who also need
workers, as if this was some grand accomplishment.

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beaker52
Border Force staff are being (asked/forced) to work overtime specified in
their contracts. Why are we so quick to hate on Amazon, who actually deliver
things that we're going to need?

~~~
Hokusai
> Why are we so quick to hate on Amazon, who actually deliver things that
> we're going to need?

Because Amazon is using desperate people to sign abusive contracts and then
make them work risking their lives and loved ones to increase an already huge
profit.

> who actually deliver things that we're going to need?

This post is full of this propaganda from Amazon. Who said that they are
delivering first necessity items? Who said that it is better to have one
person touching thousands of packages and sending to people's homes is a good
idea?

Amazon is nos just being a bad player in the job market but also it is
damaging the much needed rational on-line debate.

Please, keep yourself safe and help society by staying home when asked by the
authorities. It is not just about you, but also others.

~~~
beaker52
Should we keep doctors out of their places of work too? Or is their life worth
risking? What about the police? What about people who keep
electricity/water/communication services running? What about food and goods
manufacturers? What about people who deliver that food and those goods? Want
to talk rational? People are going to need things. How can you just expect
_the_ most significant supply chain actor in the world to _stop_ functioning
when supply is going to become vastly important?

It's so, so trendy to hate Amazon these days.

And I do keep myself and society safe. I am staying home, before the
authorities even asked.

But if I was part of an essential supply chain, I'd be going to work. Because
supply chains are important, especially when there's a virus going round,
putting pressure on supply. I've even volunteered to deliver groceries at
unsociable hours for an online grocery store, just to make sure that people
get things like food in these difficult times.

Apparently telling people to stay home is the new social bandwagon of
(dis)approval.

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whoisjuan
The faster the automation of these types of jobs can happen the better. This
crisis is showing us that.

People worry about the loss of jobs due to automation but humanity has to
evolve to create new professional lines with new types of employment that
don't involve things like someone packing boxes or transporting goods.

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Hokusai
> Workers at Amazon's UK warehouses are being told to work overtime to tackle
> huge demand due to the coronavirus pandemic, despite government calls to
> restrict social contact.

Amazon should be held responsible for all the damage that they do to their
employees.

> She pointed out that under Working Time Regulations in the UK, overtime is
> limited to a maximum of 48 hours per week, averaged over a 17-week period.
> Workers can "opt out" of the maximum weekly limit, however, and some are
> required to do so as a condition of employment.

Any right that you can opt-out it is not a right at all.

This is why the survival rate for the poor and the right is going to be
different. In our modern society we have the resources for taking care of
everybody, it is just greed and malice that allow for this situations.

~~~
TulliusCicero
> Amazon should be held responsible for all the damage that they do to their
> employees.

I'm confused, Amazon ships all kinds of things, and people still need to be
able to buy stuff. How is this different from logistical workers in any other
industry? To enable people to still buy groceries, there's all kinds of
workers in that chain.

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sharadov
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