I had nooo idea. Holy shit!
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@boomzilla said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
@gąska said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
n Europe, we have the concept of "insanity at the time of the crime", which basically means you're not responsible for doing things if you couldn't control yourself; not sure if USA has similar laws or not
We do, but that is irrelevant to my objections.
@gąska said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
It's not a groundbreaking proposition to have professional psychiatrists and psychologists tell the court whether the psychological damage is real or not, and whether it could be caused by particular policies.
You seem to be saying (as I've been accusing you) that we should have vague laws and then try to back into figuring out the actions and hold people accountable after the fact in an ad hoc fashion. That is absolutely evil.
Finally a falsifiable statement I can actually respond to! So let's start with the obvious. No, I didn't argue for having vague laws and figuring out how it applies to a given corporation on the fly. That would be absolutely evil. I want a rigid, well-defined law so everyone - including our corporate overlords - knows exactly what they can and cannot do. But unlike you, I believe it is possible to define mental health, and laws pertaining mental health, in a fashion that satisfies these criteria. It also seems to me that the law already defines these terms in very similar contexts to the one we're discussing, and there already exist laws that deal with workplace abuse. I'm saying that given our current laws, we're already 90% there on the way to criminalize systematic <this very long term I use instead of emotional abuse> of employees by employers, and the missing 10% would be made of laws very similar to what we already have in other branches of law. So the risk of such laws being abused for punishing everyone the government doesn't like is negligible - or at the very least, less or equal to the risk we have with the laws that already exist.
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@gąska said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
Given all the above, it is reasonable to assume Amazon has specifically crafted their policies to maximize their employees' efficiency
at the cost ofwith reckless disregard for their mental health.That I would agree with.
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@gąska said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
But at least you've had a good laugh at my expense!
I'm pretty sure no one is laughing at you. Take it easy.
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@xaade said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
@gąska said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
in Europe, we have the concept of "insanity at the time of the crime", which basically means you're not responsible for doing things if you couldn't control yourself
It's not that you can't control yourself.
It's that you can't grasp reality and aren't aware of your actions in reality and the effects.
Okay, I worded it a little wrong. The point is, we already have psychiatrists and psychologists involved in determining guilt of defendants in court.
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@Gąska If anything there was an equally balanced debate about this whole "amazon being an asshole" thing here and you contributed to it significantly. Pretty fucking sure nobody's laughed at you and I'm sure all of us had something to gain from this. So like chill, really.
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@gąska said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
But unlike you, I believe it is possible to define mental health, and laws pertaining mental health, in a fashion that satisfies these criteria.
Hmm.
@gąska said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
It also seems to me that the law already defines these terms in very similar contexts to the one we're discussing, and there already exist laws that deal with workplace abuse.
I would be interested in an example.
@gąska said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
I'm saying that given our current laws, we're already 90% there on the way to criminalize systematic <this very long term I use instead of emotional abuse> of employees by employers, and the missing 10% would be made of laws very similar to what we already have in other branches of law.
Actually, I'd say we already have a lot of stuff in place in the form of labor laws.
@gąska said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
So the risk of such laws being abused for punishing everyone the government doesn't like is negligible - or at the very least, less or equal to the risk we have with the laws that already exist.
This is a judgment that I cannot share.
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@boomzilla said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
Actually, I'd say we already have a lot of stuff in place in the form of labor laws.
And I'd bet Amazon has an army of lawyers (also working 85 hours a week and crying at their desks) to make sure they don't quite violate any of them.
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My issue with all of this "they're forcing them to work so hard it causes mental illness" is that it treats the workers as either slaves or objects, lacking agency. By continuing to work there voluntarily, they're saying that they value the pay check more than the costs of the "abuse". And the constant flood of applicants says that they're not alone.
It's the same problem with sweat-shops--yes, they don't meet standards in the US. But relative to the other opportunities those people have, they're desirable. Because subsistence farming sucks, way worse than factory work.
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@benjamin-hall said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
My issue with all of this "they're forcing them to work so hard it causes mental illness" is that it treats the workers as either slaves or objects, lacking agency. By continuing to work there voluntarily, they're saying that they value the pay check more than the costs of the "abuse". And the constant flood of applicants says that they're not alone.
My issue with all of this "they're volunteering to work there, they can quit at any time" is completely disregarding that there are well studied methods of coercing people with psychological tricks to do things that are harmful to themselves. Pickup artists, con artists, fascists, crazy girlfriends, Amazon - they have one thing in common: they perfected their practical psychology skills and use them for their own gain at the expense of other people, while making it look like they're all doing it out of their free will.
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I remember reading a similar article a few years ago about Amazon, and it seemed like they treated employees like tools. Push to max, use for a few months, and discard and replace when they're not good enough.
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@gąska and unless they're making fraudulent promises, then those are all beyond the scope of what law should cover. Judicialising everything runs major risks--people start equating legality with morality and behavior gets worse. It also runs the risks of letting people with grudges destroy others at will--malicious accusations or prosecutions are already a problem.
Edit: I say this as someone who experienced significant emotion and mental abuse from my brother growing up, using those techniques. It was bad. But bringing the law into it is a "cure" worse than the disease.
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@benjamin-hall said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
But bringing the law into it is a "cure" worse than the disease.
Did you get legal help?
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@stillwater said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
INB4 someone calls me a pussy for not being able to put in 60+ hours a week.
Anyone asks me to pull that kind of shit:
@stillwater said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
I bet everybody here has worked with someone like that.
Thank $deity, no.
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@benjamin-hall the thing is, if you don't get laws in place, they're never going to stop it. So you either make this awful "cure", or accept corporations abusing the hell of their employees as just a normal part of life, similar to how here in Poland, we've accepted long ago that auto repairs screw over their customers and there's nothing we can do about it.
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@gąska said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
or accept corporations abusing the hell of their employees as just a normal part of life
So tell me this, why do you think people who KNOW they're being abused and fucked over at Amazon choose to NOT leave?
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@stillwater dunno. But it certainly isn't because they can't find a job anywhere else. They're working at fucking Amazon! They'll easily find employment elsewhere!
Given how badly screwed they seem to be from the article, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that the reason they accept to deal with the psychological problems induced by their job is the psychological problems induced by their job.
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@gąska said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
But it certainly isn't because they can't find a job anywhere else. They're working at fucking Amazon! They'll easily find employment elsewhere!
TRUE.
@gąska said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
I wouldn't rule out the possibility that the reason they accept to deal with the psychological problems induced by their job is the psychological problems induced by their job.
Are you saying of all the psychological problems that are caused by amazon, one of them might be "I shall CHOOSE to VOLUNTARILY stay even though I KNOW I am getting fucked over" ?
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@benjamin-hall said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
My issue with all of this "they're forcing them to work so hard it causes mental illness" is that it treats the workers as either slaves or objects, lacking agency. By continuing to work there voluntarily, they're saying that they value the pay check more than the costs of the "abuse". And the constant flood of applicants says that they're not alone.
It's the same problem with sweat-shops--yes, they don't meet standards in the US. But relative to the other opportunities those people have, they're desirable. Because subsistence farming sucks, way worse than factory work.
Yes. The issues here are that Amazon's warehouse workers are willing to sacrifice their sanity in order to try to keep the paychecks from jobs that they aren't really performing adequately in, and Amazon isn't detecting this and shitcanning those employees for their own good.
Alternately, Amazon could try to hire more workers at lower pay and demand less output from them on average. But there's no guarantee this would work better for Amazon. Anyway, they have every right to try to hire only the cream of the crop, with high wages and high expectations that many or even most prospective employees won't be able to achieve. The only problem is that they need to cull the stragglers and make sure that nobody is working themselves ragged at a job they should really just be fired from because they're incapable of performing it at the level required.
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You know what all this reminds me of? Grad school. Except that was worse and the pay sucked.
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@stillwater said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
@gąska said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
I wouldn't rule out the possibility that the reason they accept to deal with the psychological problems induced by their job is the psychological problems induced by their job.
Are you saying of all the psychological problems that are caused by amazon, one of them might be "I shall CHOOSE to VOLUNTARILY stay even though I KNOW I am getting fucked over" ?
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. With a double underline of the word "MIGHT". Skewing their perception to the point they don't see mental breakdowns as a problem, or not connecting it to their job, or thinking it's an acceptable tradeoff for... what exactly is Amazon offering them? Are they paying twice the market average, or what?
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@gąska said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
what exactly is Amazon offering them? Are they paying twice the market average, or what?
Above average, almost certainly, but probably nowhere near double. The possibility of even more in stock, if the company keeps growing; this keeps people there who might otherwise leave, because there's always a carrot dangling in front of them — if I stay here, there's $X in stock options that I'll lose if I quit. A sense of accomplishment, that they're helping change the world; that's a powerful motivation to the kind of person that can get through their hiring process. The prestige of working for a company that is a household name around the world. The knowledge that if they can survive a couple of years, they can get hired at just about any other company of their choice.
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@hardwaregeek said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
that's a powerful motivation to the kind of person that can get through their hiring process
Hm, I never thought of this factor. Is it possible their recruiting process significantly favors people who are more likely than average to dedicate their entire lives for the company?
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I'd guess it's like quants. No one expects to be a quant long term. You get in, survive for a couple years, then "retire" to a less demanding job with a pile of cash and a golden ticket anywhere to any job. While you're in, it's hell.
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@gąska said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
@hardwaregeek said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
that's a powerful motivation to the kind of person that can get through their hiring process
Hm, I never thought of this factor. Is it possible their recruiting process significantly favors people who are more likely than average to dedicate their entire lives for the company?
I'd say it's a near certainty. I don't know exactly how you'd devise a process to find people like that — I'm sure they don't come right out and ask, "Would you sell your soul to Satan to get and keep this job? — but ISTM that it wouldn't be too difficult to sift out the people who care about anything else.
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@benjamin-hall TIL "quant."
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@hardwaregeek You can say "quantitative analyst" if you really want.
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@blakeyrat TIL "quantitative analyst".
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@hardwaregeek said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
The prestige of working for a company that is a household name around the world.
I think this is it primarily. Everything else like working on interesting problems at scale can be done at some place else too.
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@blakeyrat said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
@hardwaregeek You can say "quantitative analyst" if you really want.
The one that's everyfreakingwhere and that really bugs me is, "tech." "We need that tech!" etc, etc.
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@anotherusername said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
@gąska What's not to understand? He answered your question. It's a dysfunctional work environment, but not an abusive one, because employees voluntarily choose to put themselves in that environment by working there.
"It's a dysfunctional relationship but not an abusive one because the wife voluntarily chooses to put herself in that environment by being married to him"
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@jaloopa yes. And? Unless the relationship actually is abusive, that is an accurate statement. It may not be perfect, it may be dysfunctional in ways, but neither party has reached the point of abandoning it yet.
Amazon isn't violating any employment laws, so it's not an abusive employer. It may be a shitty one, but if its employees don't like it, they can leave.
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@anotherusername said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
so it's not an abusive employer.
TIL abusive == illegal.
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@aygeeplus in this case, it's pretty much how I'd determine whether an employer was abusive, yes.
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@gąska said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
The absolute limit of employee efficiency is higher than the limit of employee efficiency achievable without detrimental effect on mental health.
Actually, I'd like to believe that great improvements on mental health will vastly improve efficiency overall...
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@gąska said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
In the 20 seconds it would take them to explain why I'm wrong.
It's clearly taken longer than that to get started understanding the issue properly.
Bureaucracy at its finest!
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@benjamin-hall said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
You know what all this reminds me of? Grad school. Except that was worse and the pay sucked.
You got paid to go to grad school? I'm almost curious enough to ask where....
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@anotherusername said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
@aygeeplus in this case, it's pretty much how I'd determine whether an employer was abusive, yes.
Having lived through abuse, I'd put the bar for abuse much higher. I saw (legal, employer) abuse as I described up thread. An advisor (who controls the graduation of a grad student) expecting a grad student to work 7 days a week, 10+/day and that's not even on her dissertation project and then badmouthing her to the other faculty is well within what I'd call abusive. Legal, but abusive as can be.
@Tsaukpaetra Hard science grad students almost always get a tuition waiver and a small stipend (for either teaching or doing research). No one pays to get a physics PhD unless you're desperate. And if you're desperate, you shouldn't be getting a physics PhD.
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@benjamin-hall said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
No one pays to get a physics PhD unless you're desperate. And if you're desperate, you shouldn't be getting a physics PhD.
You're right. I shouldn't have to pay!
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@tsaukpaetra Borg Weasel?
He's gone far in life with that name.
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@blakeyrat said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
@tsaukpaetra Borg Weasel?
He's gone far in life with that name.
? It says Borg Weare ....
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My first thought upon reading that was that there needed to be some firings. But then I get to shit like this:
Rather than working late on a Friday evening, organising the annual team-building trip to Slough or volunteering to supervise the boss’s teenager on work experience, the quiet quitters are avoiding the above and beyond, the hustle culture mentality, or what psychologists call “occupational citizenship behaviours”.
...and now I'm thinking this is some kind of Amazon propaganda (and so I came here to necro this thread). Seriously, ? People actually do shit like that?
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@boomzilla said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
the annual team-building trip to Slough
The Slough of Despond is a fictional, deep bog in John Bunyan's allegory The Pilgrim's Progress,
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@boomzilla said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
People actually do shit like that?
Not me. Not ever in my (thinks...) 37 year career.
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@HardwareGeek said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
@boomzilla said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
the annual team-building trip to Slough
My first thought was "Elkhorn".
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@dcon Despond seems more appropriate to a "team-building" event.
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@HardwareGeek said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
@boomzilla said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
the annual team-building trip to Slough
The Slough of Despond is a fictional, deep bog in John Bunyan's allegory The Pilgrim's Progress,
This miry Slough is such a place as cannot be mended; it is the descent whither the scum and filth that attends conviction for sin doth continually run,
Sounds like an improvement on non-fictional Slough of Berkshire.
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@boomzilla said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
My first thought upon reading that was that there needed to be some firings. But then I get to shit like this:
Rather than working late on a Friday evening, organising the annual team-building trip to Slough or volunteering to supervise the boss’s teenager on work experience, the quiet quitters are avoiding the above and beyond, the hustle culture mentality, or what psychologists call “occupational citizenship behaviours”.
...and now I'm thinking this is some kind of Amazon propaganda (and so I came here to necro this thread). Seriously, ? People actually do shit like that?
Occasionally. But instead of other work, not as extra work.
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@boomzilla quoted in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
organising the annual team-building trip
and
volunteering to supervise the boss’s teenager on work experience
are not the same. The former, sure, whatever (although it should be mostly part of normal work hours). The latter, fuck no.
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@boomzilla said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
Seriously, ? People actually do shit like that?
I sure as fuck don't. I don't even attend most of the after work events, let alone plan them.
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@stillwater said in I had nooo idea. Holy shit!:
So I create a new post and by default I'm "not watching". Like fucking really? Intuitive.Very.
I find this the most useful possible default. Do not fix.