Hell Is Other Human Resources ft. Alex Press
It's the free one!
We are joined by Alex Press (@alexnpress), of Jacobin and the Primer podcast, to do some more Amazonology. This time, we look at the specifics of how HR operates at this company, how its shittiness ends up hurting workers, and how Amazon is gearing up to export more of its working practices to others. But first, we wonder at why and how it was the parties that finally turned the British establishment against Boris Johnson.
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Comments (13)
Not having a fun time with the Amazon "Sniper Guy" having the same name as me :\
another reason why Amazon wants staff turnover is that there *is no career progression*. People talk a lot about automation, and that's exactly what it is: the physical stuff done by people on the ground doesn't change at all, it's just that all those positions of shipping clerk, low-level management, other sit-down positions that you're supposed to normally evolve into after a decade or two don't exist at all at Amazon because everything is written on the computer in Seattle. The company is altogether disinterested in the workplace experience anyone might gather on the shop floor.
I'm getting huge flashbacks of Russiagate from this bojo party scandal.
Milo saying that because Amazon's HR is so heavily computerised it should be _less_ error-prone than humans... I dunno if you've ever used AWS, but the thing is a fucking MC-Escher nightmare. The only reason the tech sector use it is for scale and adaptability. It is absolutely horrible to do anything with, and is impossible to use without extensive training, and lord have mercy on your soul if you ever put one foot wrong with it because it will blow up your entire company. If their HR software is anything like AWS, I bet it's totally shit, but really really big.
Yeah, and it is just as likely that their various HR systems aren't talking to each other as a result of basic human halfassedness and scaling up too fast as by design. I think everybody was on point about it only getting fixed because Amazon doesn't inadvertently exhaust its labor pool and put wage pressure on itself, but after having watched AWS for a while I am fully prepared to believe that this is just how they write code. They're great at putting together infrastructure and selling it cheaply, and terrible at anything that requires user experience nous or product management.
It is still jaw dropping to me how we've accepted the deaths of 120K+ people (I don't even know the current stats now. Some have said 150K) as completely normal and & inevitable, like there was nothing that could be done when we knew about this virus in January 2 years ago. But having a shitty party during lockdown is what we're being primed to be upset about. Serial killers have put in the electric chair for less deaths.
There's something on the nose about the host who's always disgusted with a co-host for being vulgar conspicuously using a classical pronunciation for the letter V. Agoranomos out.
I work with a guy whos been fired twice from amazon due to their HR issues. The first time due to some weird typo or something when he got hired at one site the system had him down as starting at a site halfway across the country. So after a couple weeks of showing up to the place he was supposed to be working at he was automatically fired for not showing up to the other site. They managed to fix that intime for him to dislocate his shoulder and have to go on leave. HR screwed up his leave and the system automatically fired him. They fixed that and now he still works there but he keeps all his files and links on a flash drive because he's convinced he's going to get fired again and lose all his files while HR fixes whatever they accidentally fired him for that time.
You know, when they say that "Brazil is the future, and always will be", l'm starting to think they mean Terry Gilliam's
Does oriented strandboard count as wood for the purpose of knocking on wood when a potential lathe wielder invokes the nightmarish concept of "hundreds of thousands of American columnists"? Asking for a group of friends comprising ~.6% of the American population. How engineered is too engineered when it comes to engineered wood and the warding off of evil omens?
back in the days they called it the Society of Leisure. Everyone was supposed to work 15 hours a week and spend the rest writing novels, or doing paintings.
Supermarket wine is just fine I now support Boris Johnson
I appreciated Alice’s dunk on the Pats.