Working with the river tribe
End of March: "We're switching to a new schedule and new location assignments to accomodate social distancing requirements while you essential employees continue to work to provide 90% of our tribe's profits. Management will be working from home."
Early April: "You all are doing so well. We're going to be providing additional compensation for your essential work during this dangerous and uncertain period. Please remember to keep following all social distancing guidelines."
April-today: "We're still working on the details for the additional compensation."
Last week: "Submit your questions for the cluster all hands" *everyone asks about additional compensation.
Today: "2.5 hours of blathering about success stories, safety updates, and just how awesome AWS is. Our morale has never been higher, even through the pandemic and the protests. No i'm not going to answer any questions from SEA because we're over. I hope you all have a safe, secure, and highly-available day"
I no longer feel bad about being late to work yesterday.
re: Working with the river tribe [UPDATE]
Today's conference call was specifically about our local covid update. As expected, our questions, called "very pointed" questions by our over-chief were acknowledged, and yet again invalidated through lack of response and action.
re: Working with the river tribe [UPDATE]
No additional COVID compensation. "Our procedures are keeping us safe, and we have no additional demand at our data centers unlike our warehouses where we had to increase compensation as an market-driven incentive to draw labor" Basically, they only gave money to the warehouses so they could convince new employees to work for them.
re: Working with the river tribe [UPDATE]
So, now apparently all Essential Workers for the River Tribe are going to get actual hazard pay.
But not me. The River Tribe Web services make the tribe more than half of its profit, but we aren't considered worthy of care.
So a bunch of us are gonna just gonna be sick tomorrow.
re: Working with the river tribe [UPDATE]
Back at work after 2 days of being sick. We sent a message that has apparently been heard.
But I'm not holding my breath. Spend the start of yesterday kinda freaked out, thinking that if the RT sees me not being at work and not noticing much change in the numbers, then they might start questioning if they really need me around. That was a un-fun thing to think about. But I have just trained 3 new contractors in a 4 week period, and I got each one mostly ready to go.
So we'll see what happens. Meanwhile, I'm gonna keep doing my best.
re: Working with the river tribe [UPDATE]
The cluster manager who "led" us through the past few months has been banished from the River Tribe.
The Regional manager is stepping in to lead us directly.
During the call today, I got to unload my 2 talking points
-Web Services makes amazon over 50% of their /profit/ and are considered "essential", but not essential enough to be compensated for being forced to accept the risks of working during the pandemic
-Being told frequently by leadership that they don't have a plan, or can't talk about their plans does not build trust.
re: Working with the river tribe
@kelseyhusky Sounds to me like it'd be a good time for the techs keeping it up and alive to organize and provide some unscheduled downtime if compensation doesn't arrive. <..<
re: Working with the river tribe
@Soreth God i wish, but we're too easily tracked.
re: Working with the river tribe
@kelseyhusky I suppose the alternative would be folks turning off the on-call pages. <..<
re: Working with the river tribe
@Soreth Since corona, there is only one person who gets pages, and he's a manager. (the newest one) They shut down the on-call rotation, and no one wants to go back onto it until we get answers.
re: Working with the river tribe
@kelseyhusky That was what Kristy always said about them! The culture always sounded so libertarian and "find your own way through"... yet so authoritarian and "no, we didn't mean THAT way" that it was mindblowing that anyone ever finished anything at all. The overall impression that I got was that it had "principles" no more than a slime mold had principles; it just had stimuli and responses, because there was no central nervous system.
re: Working with the river tribe
@zebratron2084 *A question is asked*
Cluster manager: "Great question. $someone_else, go take a look at that and come up with a system for collecting metrics so I can have even longer to avoid making a decision i could make right now using my authority as a manager and 'leader' I've got such great bias for action. 10 points to me."
re: Working with the river tribe
@kelseyhusky Oh god, it sounds like some sort of 1970s satire. Like something Paddy Chayefsky or Billy Wilder would direct. I'm so sorry you have to deal with this shit.
re: Working with the river tribe
@zebratron2084 I'm sarcastically exaggerating a probably inaccurate interpretation of the cluster manager's actual words, but literally on the stream someone asked him a direction question, and I heard an answer that was about .75 trumps worth of evasion. But intent vs impact applies to management, too.
re: Working with the river tribe
@kelseyhusky 0.75 Trumps is a *terrifying* amount of evasion. :O I feel kinda privileged now, honestly: my employers at HERE, Inc. have been so... German about everything. It's almost funny how much the Simpsons stereotype from that one episode where the Germans take over has turned out to be true. (Except we haven't gotten any chocolate. :( ) They've been incredibly forthright with us all -- we did get our pay cut, but they really bent over backwards to make sure the money came from ANYWHERE except firings and rank-and-file salaries. I can understand the poor bastard is probably under a lot of pressure to answer without actually answering... but holy crap, that's disrespectful of them. -__- I wish y'all luck getting better out of them!
re: Working with the river tribe
@zebratron2084 There's yet another meeting on thursday, this one more locally focused and centered on corona updates. I'm re-submitting my question.
re: Working with the river tribe [UPDATE]
@kelseyhusky NICE!
re: Working with the river tribe [UPDATE]
@kelseyhusky Proud of you ❤️
re: Working with the river tribe [UPDATE]
@kelseyhusky congrats! Hope it gets through at some level.
re: Working with the river tribe
I specifically asked my question referencing the tribe's own principles and how their lack of response was breaking them to force the leaders to at least acknowledge the question.
i never wanted to work for a tribe this big. there's too many overlays and stake holders to get sign-offs from. I'm constantly amazed /anything/ can get done down here.