this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
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286
Amazon's Silent Sacking (justingarrison.com)
submitted 10 months ago by EnderMB@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 179 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (9 children)

This part is crazy.... What's really nuts is everyone was saying this was what RTO was all about, was actually forcing their most expensive employees (who are probably also their most valuable????) to quit. They don't want workers who know their value. It's wild how the rich are so transparent and barely even try to mask it anymore.

Amazon won’t fire me

On September 1st, 2023 I was told by my skip level manager and VP that my team and an adjacent team were being eliminated. They claimed we all did such good work that they wanted us to remain at Amazon. “We still have a job, just not a role.”

I was skeptical of how it was communicated–or rather not communicated–by management and I asked if severance was an option. I was repeatedly told it would be once we’d exhausted other options.

They told us our number one priority was to find another job. Every role we found had significant downsides. Lower pay, lower title, RTO, or various other things.

It was clear they wanted us to take a different role we could quit later. My management wanted to retain the headcount, but couldn’t do layoffs.

October 16th I asked my VP for the severance I was told would be available. He let me know HR wasn’t aware of what he was doing and he would have to get approval. It would take some time.

Every week for the next 2 1/2 months I asked for an update on my employment and severance package. I was either ghosted or given a variety of excuses. It’s now December 30th and I’m currently still employed by Amazon.

It hasn’t only been happening to my team. This has been happening in multiple areas as Amazon silently sacks people without being required to give them severance or announce layoffs. I’ve heard similar tactics being used at other companies–mostly large companies–and it’ll only continue in 2024 as they make decisions that drive short term profits over all else.

[–] dojan@lemmy.world 88 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Ugh. Seeing shit like this makes me question what the point of life even is. I don't want to partake in this bullshit. Sure I can basically boycott Amazon (unless you count AWS which half the web runs on - can't do shit about that), and it's easy to do so here in Sweden since they're particularly garbage and don't really offer anything of value.

But Amazon was never the problem. The system is broken. Amazon is just one symptom, and there's loads of companies out there operating at different levels but doing basically the same bullshit.

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 67 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

Exploitation has never changed.

This isn't very different from the downsizing of the 90's, every time we go through this song and dance they find new ways to screw us, because often we've legally fought for the previous ways to be denied. They'll do anything to pay the least. They don't actually care about remote or in-office at all based on this comment over at hackernews:

They've also begun heavily pivoting hiring for dev roles to India now as well. I have cousins who attended no name universities in India getting SWE roles in Amazon - something that was unimaginable 5 years ago - and expanding Dev offices to lower CoL cities like Hyderabad while slowly pivoting away from Bangalore.

Addendum:

Also, the Indian branches (edit: of companies that aren't Amazon) are fairly remote work friendly. Now you have people earning $20-40k/yr living in their ancestral towns and villages where median incomes might be $3-5k

This is why I warned HN that remote first will make tech more competitive.

They're happy to replace US workers with cheaper workers from other countries, they don't care that they work remote.

Anyway, I don't disagree, it makes me want to give up and I believe the system is broken, and it's been broken since before I was born.

If these people could still own other people as slaves: They would.

I'm of the position that if we allow companies to be international, then they have to pay every employee worldwide at the same payscale just so they fucking stop doing shit like this! If a US worker is worth $100K for a position, don't pay an Indian worker $20k-$40k for the same fucking work! They have the same value, they're not worth different things because they're in a different fucking geographic location!

[–] dojan@lemmy.world 24 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Slavery isn't needed anymore, and no one is really free anyway. You can't opt out of the system.

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Doesn't mean these people still don't want that. You can tell, they get perverse joy in being control of others lives. It's literally pathological.

[–] vexikron@lemmy.zip 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You can't opt out so do not try.

Use the existing system to build parrellel systems that are not under corporate control and are robust enough to survive the corporate systems either collapsing or becoming too expensive or unreliable to use.

[–] dojan@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I don't know what prepper stuff you're on about, I'm talking about simple bullshit like owning a home and working.

If you want to be safe from the elements and eat food, you need to partake in the BS corpo society we have. You can't just go out in the wilderness, build a shelter and live off the land. You're forever owned by and beholden to society, good luck finding a way out of that.

[–] vexikron@lemmy.zip 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I agree with what you are saying, running off and starting a farm or ranch in the wilderness is not a realistic option for most, and it certainly does not work en masse.

What I am saying is trying to make the area you do live in less reliant on large global corps starting from the ground up: support more locally grown foods, be kind to your neighbors and do mutual aide, repair and reuse what you can instead of buying new, use public transit whenever possible, etc.

Now, you are in Sweden so probably this is not very interesting or novel.

But I am in America, where I have found that actually getting anyone I have ever met to do the basic things I just outlined is nearly impossible.

And I could go on more about how from a technical computer type perspective we should all be using libre code software so as to stop supporting giant evil tech companies. Again though, I have never been able to convince any American I have ever met to do this. Its too inconvenient.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 23 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If a US worker is worth $100K for a position, don't pay an Indian worker $20k-$40k for the same fucking work! They have the same value, they're not worth different things because they're in a different fucking geographic location!

So that just means they are going to pay US workers $20k-$40k and be ok if there are few US workers.

[–] fadingembers@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 10 months ago

Such is the plight of the nursing and education industries

[–] wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago

The companies will claim it’s the cost of living difference or they are unable to find an American worker.

If they’re doing work of an American. They need to be paid like an American.

Also h1b should be eliminated. H1b are abusive.

If they can’t find an American then they’re paying shit.

Denmark comes up often because McDonald’s workers make a decent wage. Denmark also does not have a minimum wage but wages bargain for as an industry. I wouldn’t mind that system in America.

I’m paid very well but I wouldn’t mind all IT workers must make at least X. It would end those stupid jobs ads where they want 10 years of experience, a masters degree, expertise in 10 specific technologies and want to pay 15 an hour.

[–] EnderMB@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

So, I work at Amazon, and that comment is very misleading.

Amazon obviously pay less outside of the US, but one of the core reasons they hire in the US, Canada, and India is because there are far fewer protections for worker's rights. It's absolutely not about cost, because otherwise they would probably also increase roles across Europe. In the UK, you'd be very lucky to find a role compared to most smaller US locations, and many people believe it's because it's been far harder to lay people off. The same goes for locations across France, Spain, and Germany. Big tech in general is downsizing across Europe.

I also 100% call bullshit on the remote point. Everyone is back 3 days a week, worldwide. If anything, the rules in India regarding RTO are far harsher than anywhere else.

US software engineers get paid far better than us outside of the US, but if Amazon truly cared about cost, they would've moved lots of roles away years ago.

[–] vexikron@lemmy.zip 20 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It is the inevitable logic of capitalism operating as intended.

I suggest starting to build a backup I2P meshnet node/radio broadcaster, cancel your amazon prime and torrent all the shows, stop buying anything from Amazon and shop local instead.

[–] dojan@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

... Amazon ... in Sweden since they’re particularly garbage and don’t really offer anything of value.

I don't know if Amazon is uniquely crap here in Sweden or if they're the same everywhere - if the latter, I wonder how they grew to such a size because they are shadier than AliExpress and Wish.

When they launched, they used the Argentinian flag to represent Sweden. Three horizontal stripes, light blue, with a white middle stripe that has a smiling sun on it. The Swedish flag is an off-blue with a yellow cross. Sweden starts with an S, Argentina starts with an A. I've legit no idea how they did this mix-up.

All the products are machine translated. I've seen cookware with 300 metre long cables and the ability to send internal emails. I've seen curtains depicting people frolicking in sexual assault. Tents that make for great gifts for a prostitute, grandchild, or little sister. Sluts for your yard. Spotlights for indoors commercial sexual intercourse. Lots of fucking-* products, fucking egg productions, fucking vacationdogs, fucking spoons, fucking mushrooms, fucking penis curry, fucking bovine poop in red wine sauce.

Needless to say, I do not have Amazon prime, nor do I buy anything from Amazon when we have much better and more reliable local alternatives that I know conform to Swedish and European regulation and legislation, and will have my back should whatever I buy end up being faulty. I can't say the same for Amazon.

[–] Taalen@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

This takes me back to the era when every other online store was selling DVD-gramophones.

[–] drahardja@lemmy.world 49 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Among tech companies, RTO has primarily been about one thing: maintaining real estate investments. This was likely the primary reason Apple began RTO much earlier than most of its peers (Aug 2022). Apple has enormous RE investments in Apple Park, in San Diego, Austin, and a bunch of other locations, and RTO was a way to ensure their values stay up, and they can remain qualified for tax credits by bringing commerce to those areas.

The fact that RTO also causes the most expensive people to leave was a fortuitous bonus. In 2023, interest rates went high, and money (and thus revenue) became tight, so companies like Amazon enacted RTO to force their most expensive employees to leave.

Make no mistake: Apple, too, used RTO as an attrition tool. They fully expected some single-digit percentages of their engineering workforce to quit due to RTO.

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 42 points 10 months ago

Not enough people know about constructive dismissal.

My mother was approaching retirement at her old career, and right before COVID they dramatically changed her job and work hours to try and get her to just retire, and she did.

I convinced her to file for unemployment anyway due to constructive dismissal, and she won her case. She got full unemployment benefits PLUS the COVID bump for a long time while getting to retire early.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 29 points 10 months ago (2 children)

If they aren't going to fire you and you aren't going to voluntarily take a worse job, what happens?

[–] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 3 points 10 months ago

I think you become a professional job seeker until you land a better job.

[–] mosiacmango@lemm.ee 2 points 10 months ago

Hilarity.

[–] slurpeesoforion@startrek.website 25 points 10 months ago

I saw it happen once when I was young team lead. I had a number of people that worked on my team.

One day I was asked how many people we would need if we stopped doing one task. I was to naive to put two and two together.

A short time later I heard the ops manager talking to someone about offering the people they planned to get rid of other work with the express intent of avoiding paying out unemployment.

I couldn't really do anything at that point other than warn my people, which I did. I found something else a short while later. I made sure to tell management why I was quitting, which was a long list of issues including them fucking over good people.

[–] Magzmak@lemmy.world 20 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Are you still getting paid but aren't working? I'm just wanting to make sure I understand your situation. There are no more morals and ethics in company policies it seems like.

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I am not the person who wrote the post, I am just quoting it. I wish I had an answer to that question, too!

[–] WHYAREWEALLCAPS@kbin.social 4 points 10 months ago

There were never morals and ethics in company policies. Ever. The only time something that seems moral and ethical happens in corporate policies is either through happenstance or a law forces them to be that way.

[–] vexikron@lemmy.zip 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They all thought they would be so valuable that they would become the kind of rich that is capable of firing them.

They believed hook line and sinker all of the Amazon cultural bullshit and cannot understand that they too are just employees in a capitalist system that hates employees at the end of the day.

[–] WHYAREWEALLCAPS@kbin.social 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I agree with you up until the "hates employees" part. You're mistaking indifference for hate. The system doesn't give a shit about anyone who is not a capital owner collecting more capital. The plight of anyone outside of that group means nothing to the system.

[–] vexikron@lemmy.zip 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

...which always manifests itself as causing material harm to the working class, to the non capital owners.

The logic of for profit businesses, especially in the American legal framework, is known to reward the most ruthless with the positions of the most power in the company, and this gets dramatically amplified the more money is at stake.

And these people, empirically and historically, as well as theoretically from a psychological and basics of running a business / economics standpoint...

They will always lay people off and go through a restructuring phase to focus on the fundamentals. These days the CEO and VPs do not even take meaningful, if any, pay cuts. There are some counter examples to this in some other countries where cultural norms are vastly different, but in America, in the last decade in particular? It's basically always the owner capital class extracting wealth from the workers and then shedding them off when its time to.

And I say that that constitutes harm. And is thus hateful.

Time and time again we see all sorts of for profit businesses laying off workers, overworking them, underpaying them, micromanaging their non work lives, trying to instill a culture that they are their job, that there is no real non work life, cutting corners of all kinds that result in consumers overpaying for flawed products or services... etc etc.

I suppose you can take the philosophical angle that the system itself is amoral, mechanicistically speaking.

But I would argue two points:

  1. A vast and all encompassing system should be looked at both mechanistically, internally, as well as externally, or in totality.

It doesnt matter what the inner mechanisms of a system are if they continuously and predictably cause massive harm to many people in many ways, some that are direct and obvious, and others that are indirect, less obvious and more gradual.

  1. There are human beings, people, that make the decisions to lay people off, to cut safety corners, to price hike, to lie to the media and consumers. And there are people who suffer from all this. When a person does something that harms another, I call that malice, ill will, hate or cruelty, especially on the scale and of the scope that so often happens in large for profit enterprises. They are moral actors regardless of what their excuses are, harming other human beings with a capacity to feel and think and have emotions.

In its grand totality, the system uses and abuses the many, and benefits the few.

Whats worse is that its logic has now fundamentally overriden any possible communal species wide survival mechanism as it has now warmed the Earth beyond the tipping point of being able to stop climate change, ensuring even more harm.

[–] wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 4 points 10 months ago

Severance is not required by law. It’s generally given to avoid lawsuits.
Personally I’d like to see a law around severance. I think it should be expensive to lay employees off. 401k should vest. Stock options should vest and severance should be a minimum of six months.

[–] teamevil@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Wait....do you have any responsibilities currently? I'd use that time a hotspot and a personal computer to apply for another gig ASAP!

[–] ridethisbike@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

He was quoting the article, just so you're aware

[–] Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social 28 points 10 months ago (1 children)

So they got sent to the roof like Big Head?

[–] superduperenigma@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago

If only. He was getting paid enough money to buy a boat and hire a boat guy.