Amazon Unpacked

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/ed6a985c-70bd-11e2-85d0-00144feab49a.html#slide0

by pearkes • 13 years ago

73 66 13 years ago

mmelin• 13 years ago

This seems less like a story about Amazon and more about the unrealistic expectations set by local politicians in a once-great industry town.

bxc89• 13 years ago

Interesting article, sounds like a horrendous place to work by all accounts.

The technique of using temp agencies for the bulk of a workforce is very common in the States from what I understand, ensuring employees have few rights. Hopefully it doesn't become prevalent here in the UK.

cormullion• 13 years ago

Sadly it's already common in the UK, and not just for big firms with seasonal variations - local councils (for example) are looking for an out-sourced employee 'bank' that can be easily adjusted with fewer headaches. Recent changes in employment law for temporary workers may help, but may also lead to more cynical manipulation (e.g. replace all temporary staff before they become eligible for higher status...).

stevoski• 13 years ago

Too many anecdotes, not enough data.

kristopolous2• 13 years ago

I like how the unit of size was football pitch. I guess around the world it's assumed that the reader has intimate familiarity with lining up sporting fields but can't handle things like a metric system.

mkr-hn• 13 years ago

I would have preferred metric. I spent a minute trying to figure out how the distance a pitched (US) football could be a useful unit of measure when it's so variable. Then I realized pitch means field. And probably not a US football field.

fduran• 13 years ago

US football and football/soccer fields/pitches are about the same length (~100m)

eliben2• 13 years ago

Very large sizes are often described in terms of football fields. Or basketball fields, if they're smaller. There's something reassuring and familiar in such comparisons which rings better for many people than (400 by 100 meters). While I come from a metric country, I can imagine why a football field comparison sometimes gives a quicker sense of scale.

jpswade• 13 years ago

It's just a ballpark figure...

44Aman• 13 years ago

It's nothing to do with the metric system. Can you visualise 330m, or would it be easier to visualise three football pitches (or insert any other familiar large area)?

kristopolous2• 13 years ago

Metric system quite intimately. I measure all my travels, all lengths of anything meaningful, just about everything with these units. I know how long it would take me to bike, walk or drive that.

I know how much that would cost me in server farm, apartment, and retail space. My exposure to a magnitude (or a collection of) meters far exceeds my exposure to a large area reserved for multiple say, soccer fields, or any intuition on really how large they are.

To be honest, whenever I hear something like "17 football fields" I go look up the distance of a football field to try to understand what the heck they are talking about. They might as well have phrased it as the distance a snail travels in the time it takes for a tea-candle to burn.

I use metric and imperial units every day. I intuitively and immediately know what 330 meters is in almost any context.

TeMPOraL2• 13 years ago

I also don't like using "football pitches" as an unit of size[0], but unfortunately you and me are not the target audience of this comparison.

I guess around the world it's assumed that the reader has intimate familiarity with lining up sporting fields

Because it's probably true for the great majority of the population.

[0] - I've been to a real football pitch maybe 3 - 4 times in my life (for non-sports related events), I don't usually watch football and I don't plan on starting to do it. I'd much prefer for sizes to be measured in multiples of Space Shuttle wingspan, but I guess it won't fly with 99.9% of people ;).

crazysaem• 13 years ago

Similar stories like this were in the news in germany as well, a few month back, after a documentation of the ARD about working conditions in the Amazon warehouses.

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=...

droopyEyelids• 13 years ago

It's funny how a job like this fits with the cultural idea of 'the dignity of work.'

The politicians and Amazon describe the human-robot job in positive terms, like they're helping the community. But the real way jobs help people is by providing them with enough resources to improve their situation, and gain control of their lives.

Working in an Amazon factory doesn't do that. First, after hustling for 15 miles a shift making minimum wage, you aren't going to be able to return to your shelter and work on a skill or education. You'd have to eat and sleep and recover. Second, the path of distinction and promotion that would exist in another career doesn't exist. The best way to do your job has been determined by a computer, and the only distinction you can achieve is 'accuracy as a pac-man.'

I think accurate language about a job like this would only describe it as allowing people to live, period. Life maintaining, not life-improving. It's a sweatshop for the first world, and only a blessing if you weren't going to be able to eat or find shelter otherwise.

yummyfajitas• 13 years ago

First, after hustling for 15 miles a shift making minimum wage, you aren't going to be able to return to your shelter and work on a skill or education. You'd have to eat and sleep and recover.

Walking for 7-15 miles, spread over an 8 hour day, is not actually all that strenuous. It's worse than an office job, but it's pretty light exercise. In terms of calories burned, it's about double a typical boxing workout (roughly 1000 cals for boxing, 2000 for walking 16 miles@2mph), which is something I do every morning before going to an office job. In terms of intensity it's about 4x less (2x the work / 8x the time).

So figure 8 hours/day at work, another hour commuting, 8 hours sleeping, that's 7 hours/day to do whatever you want. (Hint: skip the TV, learn a skill.)

BashiBazouk• 13 years ago

Well, keep in mind the recovery is less the total calories burned and more the act of putting your entire body weight on the soles of your feet for eight hours on cement floors in crappy shoes.

Also, four to five hours of walking is not "pretty light exercise". It's a decent workout. Average speed for walking is around 3mph not 2, and if pressed by electronic monitoring and management, a bit faster than that. Probably one of the best forms of exercise out there, but rarely done for most people don't have the time. Low intensity workouts over long periods of time have a different recovery than high intensity workouts over a short time. The direct calorie comparisons don't really do it justice...

potatolicious• 13 years ago

I've worked a job before that involved a lot of walking (fittest I've ever been, sadly), I probably came close to the 15 miles-a-day bar. It's really not that bad, assuming the environment isn't a grueling hellhole.

Which Amazon warehouses reportedly are. Lots of reports of lack of air conditioning and unreasonably high temperatures. Walking 15 miles a day in a reasonably cooled warehouse is a piece of cake. 15 miles a day in a burning hot warehouse with high humidity and little fresh air... that's life-threatening.

The larger concern I have is the commute. The sort of people taking these jobs are disproportionately likely to rely on public transit, and disproportionately likely to live far from their jobs. When I worked that factory job my commute was an hour each way - and that was pretty good.

When it comes to improving one's lot in life the poor have everything stacked against them, and a reasonable commute is a major component. Nothing like working 8 hours in a heavily manual labor job, and then watch another 4 hours melt away as you wait for shittastic public transit to go back to your home in the middle of nowhere.

cpeterso• 13 years ago

Why does Amazon let their warehouses get so hot? There are news stories about Amazon parking ambulances outside warehouses on hot days. Instead of reducing the time to take heat exhausted workers to the hospital, why not prevent the problem in the first place?

http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2017901782_a...

leef• 13 years ago

That is not true. Success in a job is not always defined by thinking outside the box and being creative. Often it is much simpler - show up to work on time, produce, add value as depicted in your job description. The people that do these things are the people at get the full time job at Amazon, become shift supervisors, etc. I have worked with people who started out at Amazon on the floor and are now high level managers of warehouses and software teams.

I've been to a couple of the Amazon warehouses in the US and it's hardly a sweatshop. You work a normal shift, you get a lunch break, at least minimum wage, etc. It is certainly a job far removed from what I am used to now as a software developer. It was more reminiscent of my time in the Navy but still not a bad job to have and an opportunity for those who take advantage of it.

x0x0• 13 years ago

yeah, with ambulances staged right outside when people keel over from heat stroke [1]

   So many ambulances responded to medical assistance calls at the warehouse 
   during a heat wave in May, the paper said, that the retailer paid Cetronia 
   Ambulance Corps to have paramedics and ambulances stationed outside the 
   warehouse during several days of excess heat over the summer. About 15 
   people were taken to hospitals, while 20 or 30 more were treated right 
   there, the ambulance chief told The Call.

so just like disney, really

[1] http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/inside-amazons-very...

eliben2• 13 years ago

I wonder how long it takes for such jobs to be fully robot-staffed. I had the impression it's already the case for some types of warehouse tasks. With very high likeness, within our lifetime there will be no need for human pac-mans.

gedrap2• 13 years ago

And what are the chances that the packers who are complaining now, will be complaining then that their jobs were taken away and they want it back? Pretty damn high, I'd say.

phaemon• 13 years ago

If all you're given to drink is dirty water, and you complain about it, that doesn't mean you want nothing to drink. It means you want something better to drink.

goatforce5• 13 years ago

Amazon bought a company called Kiva Systems that builds warehousing systems where robots bring the shelving units to the human packers. It's really neat:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWsMdN7HMuA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiva_Systems

So essentially this system eliminates the up to 15 miles of walking that each worker does per day. Amazon paid $775m for Kiva, and the cost of fitting out each warehouse with the Kiva system can't be cheap... The cost to pay an army of people to walk 15 miles per day must add up real quick!

qq66• 13 years ago

It'll take a long time. Observe that:

1) Unemployment is high and shows no signs of structural reduction, and minimum wage remains flat.

2) Salaries for computer programmers are at an all-time high, when you can recruit them.

3) Energy and materials costs continue to increase.

It doesn't make economic sense to have a lot of highly-paid engineers building resource-intensive robots when you can hire people to do the same jobs.

retroafroman• 13 years ago

This is the most correct reply in all the comment section. I work in operatioa consulting for warehouses and previously worked for an automation company. Very, very few companies are willing to pay more for automation. A lot of times, it just doesn't make sense. Even if there will be a projected return on investment in a few years its a hard sell.

mikegreen3• 13 years ago

We've gotten to a point where those who read this article will say sweatshop labor is OK because we want our 2-day free shipping. Then, we say it isn't OK because they make minimum-wage, have to walk 15 miles a day, and work under management that runs the shop by strict metrics. Well, someone has to do it (at least now.. coming soon: robots) - not everyone is destined to goto college or even a voc-tech school to learn how to operate a bulldozer.

It sucks, I agree. But, 40 years ago it was a mining town. Mining by all accounts to me (tech desk jockey) sucks worse than an Amazon warehouse, but yet there was some dignity and pride in being a miner. You were producing coal for power! Power saved the country in war! Power keeps the lights on! Yay! Go miners! But, making millions of people happy by providing them widgets and sheets and 0.99cent cart-filler-chinese-made-LEDs doesn't make you happy?

timthorn• 13 years ago

Mining paid a lot better than pick&pack.

mikegreen3• 13 years ago

Probably. But mining had huge risks. The cave collapses. The air you breathe was horribly toxic. You traded life expectancy for more money. I imagine you did a fair amount of harder labor and walked more than an Amazon warehouse. And there is a damn canary chirping all the time.

gadders2• 13 years ago

Yes, and made a huge loss as well.

bambax• 13 years ago

Mining (...) sucks worse than an Amazon warehouse

I'm not sure.

Yes, mining was physically one of the most demanding / intense work there has ever been -- see this fantastic description by Orwell for example: http://george-orwell.org/Down_The_Mine/0.html

But, in a way, it that was a good thing, because you did a job most other humans weren't capable of doing.

Crito• 13 years ago

I wonder which has a greater life expectancy and quality: workers who have to walk several miles a day in a clean warehouse, or workers who (ignoring the more immediate occupational hazards...) spend their careers breathing coal and silica dust.

Of course mining sucks more than warehouse work... it kills you slowly.

saintx2• 13 years ago

At the end of each day, in a University town, you might sit down to enjoy a meal or a cup of coffee at a local café, and strike up a conversation with a complete stranger. The two of you might find quite a lot to talk about, trading ideas and perspectives on different subjects, and ideas would flow between you, like heat from a hot cup of coffee into cold hands. But in a one-shop town (like the one I grew up in, or the one in this story), at the end of the day, what do these hard working people have to talk about? Moving packages. The insult of everyone having the same job is compounded by the injury of every moment of the job being the same as the next. Nobody needs to talk, because there's nothing new to say. There's no "heat" exchange, because everyone is in the same pressure cooker with everyone else. There's no differentiation, just accumulation. Organizations and organisms, to be healthy, need specialized organs. Accumulation without differentiation is what we call "cancer".

zrail4• 13 years ago

(please don't compare things to cancer, it does both a disservice)

AndrewDucker• 13 years ago

Metaphor is a common part of every language. Please don't ask people not to use it without clear information on why they shouldn't.

pdx2• 13 years ago

    Accumulation without differentiation is what we call cancer

I have reason to understand that word is a scary word. But I liked the statement a lot. It's factually accurate, and yet poetic as well. I intend to remember it.

saintx2• 13 years ago

Of course, you're right about this. I think the comparison detracted from my point, and it was insensitive to people for whom cancer is not a metaphor. So, really it failed on two counts. I'm sorry about that, and am grateful for the feedback.

I was trying (without much success) to highlight a possible underlying principle in organizational development and growth of a local economy, not to imply that Amazon (or any other business) invites comparison to a devastating disease, because I don't believe they do. That town would be better off if Amazon had a half dozen strong competitors just like it, in factories across the street. I just think a town can't rest all its hopes in one company. I grew up in a town with about 600 households and 800 or so people working in one factory. When that factory went away, it was very hard on the local economy, for the families who relied on it, for the schools, and generally for everyone in the community. It seems, and I might be wrong about this, that local policies to encourage and reward entrepreneurial growth and diversification of the local economy could have provided a stronger buffer against the inevitable end of its once solid manufacturing sector. I've been pretty fortunate since then to live in places where there were hundreds of employers competing in dozens of industries, and which had a healthy cultural ferment, many different ideas to talk about, and innovation bubbling up all over the place.

agilebyte• 13 years ago

Are you saying that the place is too big and so it employs too many of the hard working people over there? Some maybe should be unemployed so they can trade perspectives on having vs not having a job?

cafard2• 13 years ago

" But in a one-shop town (like the one I grew up in, or the one in this story), at the end of the day, what do these hard working people have to talk about?"

Family, sports, national or local politics, world events, movies come to mind. A lot of people are fine with walking out the door at 5 pm and leaving work behind.

gedrap2• 13 years ago

I see their point but... But OK, what else realistically can they expect? Yes, it sucks a lot especially when all the media around you is telling all those success stories and make you feel like you are the lowest class, destined to work that kind of job for the rest of your days. Although your position is not that bad. There are millions of people who would do literally anything to have it. Or they do same/harder jobs and are still starving.

Raise the wage? I don't think Amazon would like to cut their profits to make your life better. Raise the wage and increase the price? Well then you might not have your job at all.

It sucks but your alternatives are way worse - having no job and worrying about making the ends meet everyday.

And that's exactly why there are so many Eastern Europeans in the UK. Because an average Eastern European would not complain much about walking 15 miles a day and would be really happy that he has ANY job.

(I'm from a poor family where all relatives are working in sweat shops)

wgx• 13 years ago

Reminds me of the "I was a warehouse wage slave" first-person account article - submitted to HN about a year back:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3641184

axgop2• 13 years ago

I work in a distribution center (not one of Amazon's and not on the floor). What they're describing in the article is pretty much industry standard for non-robotic picking. It's a very difficult and demanding job and we're very up front about that. People take the job figuring they can sling a few boxes and a large percent leave within their probationary period because they underestimate the work no matter how much you try to set their expectations.

I'm not saying Amazon is a benevolent employer (we pay well over minimum wage because of the nature of the work), just that nothing in the article was shocking.

pdx2• 13 years ago

The walking part of it was one of the things that jumped out at me. 15 miles is a hike. To do that every day on concrete would tear you up.

Since you work at such a place, what is the feasibility of motorized "scooter carts", that you could ride on, perhaps standing up, as you go from location to location?

pilom• 13 years ago

15 miles is a hike, but it wont tear you up after you do it for a weeek or 2. It only feels like a lot because many office drones expecation of amount of walking a day is anchored at "sit at desk all day." Appalachian Trail hikers start at 8-10 miles a day and work up to around 15 miles a day on a dirt trail over mountains while carrying 1/3 of their body weight! And they do that every single day.

15 miles a day is no big deal, to say nothing of 7 miles a day.

axgop2• 13 years ago

We use powered pallet jacks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pallet_jack). The catch with those is that a lot of items are close enough together in the warehouse that most guys end up walking alongside their jack. Still, it beats manually dragging two pallets' worth of product on what could end up being a two mile trip per order.

EliRivers2• 13 years ago

we pay well over minimum wage because of the nature of the work

The article indicates the basic wage is one penny over minimum wage.

nkurz• 13 years ago

You are correct about the article, but the OP's "we" refers the distribution center that he works for, which is not run by Amazon. Presumably it is located somewhere there are other job possibilities, and thus has to pay a premium to attract workers.

gadders2• 13 years ago

It doesn't really sound like a job I'd like to do, but I would imagine it compares favourably with the other jobs available for unskilled workers - supermarket checkouts, building site labourer, care assistant etc etc.

incision2• 13 years ago

I'm surprised at the amount of negativity here.

It's work.

As demonstrated in the article some of these people were surely just subsisting on unemployment prior.

My first job wasn't near-minimum wage, it was the absolute minimum. I didn't have work-issued safety boots to complain about, I had to buy my own. I didn't walk around a clean warehouse, I walked around outside cleaning up after every kind of urban nastiness you can imagine regardless of the weather. I wouldn't have even considered missing work in the first week for anything that didn't have me fearing for my life, let alone blisters. There was effectively no chance of being made permanent.

I was happy as hell to have that job. It changed my life and I used the small comfort it provided to study up and find my way into better things. I'd have been overjoyed to do the kind of work described in this article.

There are certainly a lot of idealistic ways these jobs "should" be, but in reality I think the idea of treating this work as anything but a temporary (for the workers and in general in light of automation) stepping stone is fantasy.

elteto• 13 years ago

Just because you had less than standard working conditions on your first job doesn't mean that others have to go through the same. I am glad it worked out for you in the end but the fact remains that your first employer was not the best one.

I think the negativity doesn't arise from the nature of the work, if I am told that the position requires heavy lifting and walking 15 miles a day then maybe I should consider whether that is something I can do. My negative reaction comes from the shady employment techniques that they seem to be using, such as using the promise of full time employment as a 'dangling carrot', as the article puts it. For a positive reference point, you could research about Costco employees (I can't seem to find the source now), who perform a very similar job (if not more demanding, since there are customers involved) and yet have very high workplace satisfaction rates.

incision2• 13 years ago

"Just because you had less than standard working conditions on your first job doesn't mean that others have to go through the same. I am glad it worked out for you in the end but the fact remains that your first employer was not the best one."

I knew I'd get this comment the moment I wrote that. You've completely missed the point to construe it that way.

"My negative reaction comes from the shady employment techniques that they seem to be using, such as using the promise of full time employment as a 'dangling carrot', as the article puts it."

That's an analogy from a former employee. There's nothing to suggest anything was actually promised.

I'm familiar with what Costco is doing and think it's great, but they're obviously quite a bit different from the model of Amazon with big, membership drive B&M stores. There's surely something to be learned from how they've succeeded, but to assume it can be applied universally is naive.

uniclaude• 13 years ago

The way this article starts reminded me of the first chapter of "Manna" by Marshall Brain[1]. Ironically, when I read this, I really thought that the first company I would see using such a system would be Amazon.

[1] http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

sailfast• 13 years ago

While many have seemed to point out the issues with the work here, the more subtle implication in the article is that temporary staffing agencies and the way they facilitate transactional labor are a more serious part of the problem. The Amazon employees have shares, equity, and incentives but the temporary labor does not, and cannot miss a shift. The 4AM Army article in Time also addresses this, and there may be a better middle ground for temporary labor than what is provided: http://nation.time.com/2013/06/27/the-4-am-army/

mchusma• 13 years ago

My tl;dr: -Mine went under in mining town -High unemployment -Amazon came in and offered jobs -Jobs paid minimum wage and 8 hour day -This in practice puts workers in top 8% globally (http://www.givingwhatwecan.org) -Jobs required moderate labor (~3-6x office work) -UK's version of OSHA required safety boots which suck -Amazon uses objective performance measures

Realistically, most of these low skill jobs will not exist in 20 years. So the message of the piece was unjustifiably: "Amazon is evil." In reality, the message should have been: "What will the world look like when even these good jobs are gone?"

don_draper• 13 years ago

>Realistically, most of these low skill jobs will not exist in 20 years.

True. Amazon is already rolling out robots at select fulfillment centers.

But it still stinks that in 2013 so many people don't feel like they are in control of their livelihoods. Not everyone can pass the algorithm tests at Amazon to get one of the good jobs.

cafard2• 13 years ago

"This in practice puts workers in the top 8% globally."

Considering cost of living in this area, or averaging it against much poorer places?

mattbasta• 13 years ago

1. They don't want you to talk to other people 2. Good exercise 3. Mastery of efficiency is praised 4. Stable job

Seriously, where does the line start?

minikites• 13 years ago

Mother Jones had a great article about the poor working conditions in these warehouses: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-f...

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