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Comment by johnny35 | Hacker News Reader

Systematizing and optimizing every detail of operations to create as large of a pool as possible of positions requiring the least possible skill, reducing the cost of turnover, training, and management complexity... seems to be externalizing a heavy toll on mental health. Regulation can tackle many cases of "socialized losses, privatized gains" but I am at a loss to understand how we can mitigate this one.

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this reads like the opposite of a systematised process - this reads like a bunch of departments who don't talk to each other striving to check off tasks in the onboarding process without actually making any effort to complete the intent of the task. Which would make sense at a highly metric-driven company like Amazon.

That's the inherent problem with quantifiable performance reviews: people optimize metrics, not results.

Amazon has a tendency to go through the show and tell in the hiring process but not commit through it. It isn't his fault. I'm sure he could've stood up for himself. However this is the flaw when you're just too big to succeed.

There are many metrics that large companies can internally optimize for, one of which is ass-covering. It sounds like Amazon is no different from any other company in that regard.

It's a systematized process that's fractured and whoever you talk to in HR is either too arrogant to help or too ignorant to know how to. I worked for Amazon twice.

There was this chap about 150 years ago, wrote about the alienation from labour caused by breaking down jobs into tiny, mindless motions that slowly eat away at your sense of self.

This stuff isn't new.

The one golden rule at Amazon is to externalize all costs that are paid by use of a human being’s labor and time.

Regulations don’t stand a chance of moving quickly enough to keep up with Amazon’s innovation budget. The only way to counter that is worker unions, which can make specific and timely demands that Amazon treat workers more humanely.

If workers unionize, Amazon has to stop externalizing the cost of labor.

Five years ago my daughter worked for Amazon in a fulfillment center for a few weeks. From her experience I developed a theory—Amazon expects a steady stream of new hires, figuring most will leave within a month. The job is low skill enough that that a new hire can hit a baseline throughput expectation (the stated goal is of course higher) within a day or two. Aggressive management demands probably pushes that baseline up pretty much until a few days before the eventual burnout.

The ones that stay long term are those people willing to overlook a shit job, aggressive output measuring, and draconian management. Those folks generally aren’t beating the union drum within the org as loud as the transient 30 day folks. Unions have trouble finding purchase because organizers are fighting that turnover and the folks motivated to unionize don’t have the patience to get there.

Other than the drug test it didn't seem like there was a single thing OP was required to do that wouldn't be solved by automation. At my current job we set up direct deposit, filled out info for background checks, completed training videos and quizzes, etc. all through online forms. Everyone OP interacted with shouldn't even be in the picture.

It's a warehouse job; I struggle to see why you even need any humans in the loop above the workers at all. Clock in, move the boxes, mark tasks completed on your handheld, clock out. Frankly I have no idea why the people org as described by OP exists the way it does for a company known for its cloud services. None of these morons OP dealt with needed to be employed.

The safety people need to be there.

imagine they read your comment and implement that...

Everyone would've had a day off today ;)

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