I feel important replying: all the stories you heard are about ground-level employees that are packing stuff in Amazon Warehouses.
I have four friends working on different levels of profession in Amazon and I can assure you not even junior programmers need to pee in the bottle without bathroom breaks.
I am in no way defending Amazon they deserve all criticism, but I think it is unfair to put everyone in the same basked within one organization. You really believe people that built then and manage AWS cloud now are treated so badly that they can't even go pee?
Here's the issue with this view, nobody, deservers to be denied basic human rights at work, even if they just pack boxes or built AWS.
You can argue that they should be on different pay scales, but as far as taking breaks, working in a safe environment and going to the toilet, they're rights that should be extended to all employees and any level of the corporate ladder.
I use Amazon far less after hearing about these issues.
I really don't understand why companies (and everyone else, for that matter) treat people in these jobs like garbage.
Yes, it's physical labour. Yes, the hiring pool is big. But it's demanding physical labour, dammit, and without these people, Amazon - or any other company that does this - would be nothing.
Shipping and fulfillment is literally the core of what Amazon is. So is making burgers at McDonald's. So is stacking shelves at Walmart. These companies literally could not function if it weren't for people doing these jobs, and I feel like "we can just hire someone else" is no excuse for not recognizing that.
I have four friends working on different levels of profession in Amazon and I can assure you not even junior programmers need to pee in the bottle without bathroom breaks.
I am in no way defending Amazon they deserve all criticism, but I think it is unfair to put everyone in the same basked within one organization. You really believe people that built then and manage AWS cloud now are treated so badly that they can't even go pee?