Amazon Expands Gamification Program That Encourages Warehouse Employees To Work Harder (theverge.com) 70
Amazon is expanding an existing program that gamifies warehouse work to encourage its fulfillment center employees to improve their efficiency and compete against others for digital rewards like virtual pets, according to a new report from The Information. From a report: The program is called FC Games, and it includes as many as six arcade-style mini-games that can be played only by completing warehouse tasks in the workplace. It's been known since at least 2019 that Amazon uses gamification in the form of workstation games to try to incentivize employees to improve productivity, but The Information reports that Amazon is now expanding those methods to warehouses in at least 20 states throughout the country.
Many of the games tend to be simple virtual representations of how fast the worker is completing a task. One, called MissionRacer, moves a car around a track while a picking employee sorts products into appropriate boxes, as reported by The Washington Post at the time. "Employees have told us they enjoy having the option to join in these workstation games, and we're excited to be taking their feedback and expanding the program to even more buildings throughout our network," Kent Hollenbeck, an Amazon spokesperson, tells The Information. "Even with this expansion, the program remains completely optional for employees; they can switch in or out of different games depending on their preference, can play anonymously, or not play at all -- the choice is theirs."
Many of the games tend to be simple virtual representations of how fast the worker is completing a task. One, called MissionRacer, moves a car around a track while a picking employee sorts products into appropriate boxes, as reported by The Washington Post at the time. "Employees have told us they enjoy having the option to join in these workstation games, and we're excited to be taking their feedback and expanding the program to even more buildings throughout our network," Kent Hollenbeck, an Amazon spokesperson, tells The Information. "Even with this expansion, the program remains completely optional for employees; they can switch in or out of different games depending on their preference, can play anonymously, or not play at all -- the choice is theirs."
Yeah ,,, (Score:5, Insightful)
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If only Amazon saw it your way, their employees would be better off.
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If only Amazon saw it your way, their employees would be better off.
Amazon pays more for unskilled labor than most other companies.
Don't take it at face value (Score:4, Insightful)
The secret and true reason for gamification is that a company can use it to find out which employees are swallowing the Kool-Aid. Just as garbage free-to-play games rely exclusively on whales who are willing to dole out hundreds of dollars on cosmetics, a gamified workplace lets you pit sane workers against those who are willing to permanently damage their knees in order to get some stupid shit jellyfish emoji on the company forums.
If you are unfortunate enough to have a McJob, please, please remember at all times that you are not competing with the top 10% of employees. You are competing with the BOTTOM 10% of employees.
The Soviet Stakhanovite movement (Score:3)
Then there is this dude
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
He wasn't popular with all of his fellow coal miners.
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"In 1988 the Soviet newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda stated that the widely propagandized personal achievements of Stakhanov were puffery. The paper insisted that Stakhanov had used a number of helpers on support work, while the output was tallied for him alone. Stakhanov's approach had eventually led to the increased productivity by means of a better organization of the work, including specialization and task sequencing, according to the Soviet state media.[13]"
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If you are unfortunate enough to have a McJob, please, please remember at all times that you are not competing with the top 10% of employees. You are competing with the BOTTOM 10% of employees.
A job is a job is a job.. now if they can only work form home, huh? Just fly some garbage collecting drone from your smartphone or teach/learn remotely. One thing, what makes them the bottom 10% is that it's usually a job the other 90% would NEVER do for themselves..
Re: Yeah ,,, (Score:2)
And even the best working conditions and pay ever can't circumvent the fact that there's only so much one can take, before the robot breaks. And that you get exponentially diminishing returns and exponentially increasing damage.
Come on now. Let's conclude that Amazon is a psychopathic human-electronic hybrid swarm AI now, and finally treat it as such. (Lock Amazon away from the market, in a corporate mental asylum.)
Then let's figure out what the "M." stands for... Now that we know what the "A." means. ;)
(Ro
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Nationalize it. Government should seize all the assets, like we do with drug dealers. Or if we are feeling generous, use eminent domain and pay a fair market price, like the Brits did when they declared slavery illegal. Then nationalize it and run it democratically.
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Seizing assets without a trial, just by declaring the assets themselves to be "breaking the law?" Naw, dude, sounds like a great policy. Why stop with drug dealers?
I mean seriously, if we can just declare an industry illegal and take their stuff, why not do it to more industries? Heck, make it illegal to be a billionaire. Seize all their assets. Give everyone in the country some of those seized stocks. Bingo! Ownership society achieved. Wasn't that what they said when they stole our pensions and gave us shi
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Being able to acquire virtual pets is totally a replacement for higher salary, better benefits, and improved working conditions. A stroke of brilliance on Amazon's part.
This is the same game HR played for years telling employees about the Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, and tell us that it is more satisfying to have self-actualization on your work than getting paid more. To which I asked, then why are our bosses being paid so much more than us? Shouldn't they be paid less since their work is so much more satisfying than ours?
Disintermediation (Score:3)
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I would have gone a bit more with, "A fucking virtual pet, a fucking VIRTUAL pet, why not a fucking virtual meal or a virtual fucking home", I know fucking know, "How about virtual fucking work, not so happy with fucking that, huh".
Holy fuck, I do not know how they did not get a mass strike when they introduced that, in some countries they would lynch every corporate executive they could get hold of.
Heaven forfend they should pay actual bonuses. The absolute sickest thing I have ever heard of. Oh yeah, I c
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Re: Yeah ,,, (Score:2)
No it's a replacement for notices, "coaching", and suspension. Your task is to get as much money as you can, and their task is to get as much production as they can. Gamification is for the latter, the former is a completely separate issue.
Yes, because the warehouse workers... (Score:5, Informative)
...all just need to work harder.
URL:https://www.npr.org/2019/11/27/783223343/amazon-warehouse-employees-face-serious-injuries-report-says
URL:https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/29/amazon-reportedly-downplayed-rising-injury-rates-at-its-warehouses.html
URL:https://revealnews.org/article/how-amazon-hid-its-safety-crisis/
Doesn't sound like fun (Score:2)
Some of those Mirror's Edge delivery time trials were frustrating enough when I wasn't doing the physical labour or making a rich guy richer in the process.
37 pieces of flair (Score:5, Funny)
Amazon Expands Gamification Program (Score:5, Insightful)
FTFY.
Re: Amazon Expands Gamification Program (Score:1)
Even without that, it's like draining your battery harder in each discharge cycle. You're gonna get worse results much quicker, and even then there's onl so much you can takey before you break the battery, if the controller knows no lower bound ("0%").
Can't, with 9 women, get a baby in one month either.
I know what knows no lower bound in terms of conscience though..
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Employees will get paid less by playing the game? I'm confused.
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More pay and better working conditions than any non-Teamsters warehouse job, plus free education to get out of the dead end warehouse work. It's a shitty, boring difficult job, I've done it (not at Amazon but elsewhere), it's nice that they're trying to make it suck slightly less.
Notice you had to add a qualifier (Score:2)
Also Amazon education benefit only applies to full time employees. Maybe it's been a long, long time since you worked a shit job but these days it's not so easy to get full time hours. You also need to be able to do a grueling job full time while going to school. Few can do that, and if you go to a state university instead of a diploma mill you're not going to get into you're 300 level courses if they find out you're working a full time job. Your odds of washing out are
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Worked full time+plus for four years while getting my associates degree. It was construction in northern Michigan, which is a frack of a lot rougher than warehouse work. Try putting on a roof in 95 degree weather or hanging siding in a snowstorm all day and then going to class for four hours. (Then make the Deans List three out of four quarters.)
Amazon education benefit only applies to full time employees.
Yep, you get full time by working hard and showing that you're interested in getting ahead. I've worked with people who have come out of the fulfillment centers
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Yep, you get full time by working hard and showing that you're interested in getting ahead.
No, you get full time by finding a company that does not go out of its way to ensure that as much of its workforce as possible is part time, thus avoiding actually *paying for* any of those benefits they waggle around every time someone points out how terrible their wages are. Which, these days, is a pretty rare beast.
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Voluntarily spending $700,000,000 over six years, money which was not required by any contract or agreement with anyone, is now somehow "avoiding *paying for*" a benefit that didn't even exist when a lot of those folks started working?
OK, I get it, you have an utter loathing of Amazon for some reason. Can you just step back and look at the company compared to its competition though? They don't operate in a vacuum, I've worked at Target, and know people who have worked at Walmart and Safeway and other reta
the next game is vote no on union ! (Score:3)
the next game is vote no on union !
Gaming the system (Score:5, Insightful)
If Bezos can afford to throw $2B at a "rocket company", he can damn well afford to pay warehouse workers better wages and benefits.
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Blue Origin is not an Amazon company, Bezos funds it out of his own pocket. He couldn't pay them directly if he wanted to, the best he can do as CEO is insist that the contracting companies they work for pays them better and give them more benefits than pretty much anyone else in that job sector, which he has done.
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So you really don't know how a publicly held company works? He's just the CEO (until Jassey takes over) and largest shareholder, not the king.
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Then you should know that he can't just dole out cash to whoever in the company he wants without the board tossing him out on the sidewalk. There was already dissension when he insisted that the contracting companies pay their employees $15/hr and give benefits, as well as when they decided to shell out $700,000,000 over six years on FC employee education. When COVID19 started they gave every FC worker an extra $2/hr until they had spent $800,000,000 on remediation and new cleaning and work protocols, and
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Well, there's the irrational rant, which had nothing to do with anything I've posted. Not very entertaining though. Disappointing.
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and hire more workers to easy/balance the workload
Do they have to pay for loot boxes? (Score:2)
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no just unpaided OT
how it works (Score:1)
Episode from television series "Sliders..." (Score:1)
Amazon's turning work into a game is akin to a Sliders television episode where everyone was wearing virtual reality gear to be in a blissful simulation, but in actuality doing tedious, boring, and sometimes nasty work without realizing it. Quod, quod, fiat.
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If it's tedious and boring, why isn't a robot doing it?
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They will be soon, Amazon makes no secret of that. They sponsor a pick-and-place competition among other things, besides spending a large amount of money on their own robotics R&D. For that matter they tell new fulfillment center employees that this is a temporary job that won't exist in a few years, the smarter and more ambitious folks educate themselves (sometimes at company expense) and move out of that position. Those who don't will eventually move to the Walmart or Target or Kroger distribution
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If you're alluding to the sliders episode, that's why they had people in the VR. I remember one guy was working at a sewer...one of the characters was working with Quinn on the timer for the sliding device...not all jobs could be done by robot--as GM found out in the 1980's when they tried to automate auto production.
Human beings are more flexible, although such companies usually treat human beings like robots--cost centers, resource unit, etc.
If you mean Amazon, well they're turning it into a Pokemon game.
burden of nescience (Score:3)
"Employees have told us whatever they believe we want to hear in order to avoid getting fired"
Manna - Two Views of Humanityâ(TM)s Future (Score:2)
Instead it was simply a PC sitting in the back corner of the restaurant running a piece of software. The software was called âoeMannaâ, version 1.0*.
Manna's job was to manage the store, and it did this in a most interesting way. Think about a normal fast food restaurant. A group of employees worked at the store, typically 50 people in a normal restaurant, and they rotated in and out on a weekly schedule. The people did everything from making the burgers to taking the orders to cleaning the tables and taking out the trash. All of these employees reported to the store manager and a couple of assistant managers. The managers hired the employees, scheduled them and told them what to do each day. This was a completely normal arrangement. In the early twenty-first century, there were millions of businesses that operated in this way.
To solve the problem, Burger-G contracted with a software consultant and commissioned a piece of software. The goal of the software was to replace the managers and tell the employees what to do in a more controllable way. Manna version 1.0 was born.
Time to Trashercise (Score:5, Insightful)
Dilbert's boss thought of this back in 1995: https://assets.amuniversal.com... [amuniversal.com]
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They're working on it, but pick-and-place robots so far are too specialized. They will need something that can pick up a new Macbook, a miniature teddy bear, a bag of quinoa, a rubber chicken, doll clothes, a package of seeds, and bubble wrap. So far nothing can do that except humans.
I got a game for them (Score:5, Insightful)
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Here's an idea to "gamify" performance at work. I'll do my job, and you "reward" me with "points". We'll call those points "USD". The better I do my job, the more "points" I earn each period. Maybe I can gain access to special "bonus" points for reaching "achievement" goals.
Ok but what if instead of USD, we give you BezosBucks, that you can spend on amazon.com to purchase the food and other necessities to your liking?
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You can only get just so good at that job, it's not like there is anything creative going on. It's pick-and-place work, which in most factories is rapidly being replaced by robots. For now the variety of items handled means that humans will continue to do it for a few more years, but don't pretend that this is even as complex as flipping burgers. They're already on average making more than anyone else in their industry, and in most areas they're making more than any other no-skill no-education position p
Shifting the source of abuse (Score:2)
Proof of slack (Score:2)
Somebody should implement a crypto-token based on proof that you slacked off while working for Amazon, and see if they can make it more profitable for employees to play *that* game.
The more you do (Score:2)
Bitcoin (Score:1)
Amazon warehouse monkeys (Score:1)
More like Amazon warehouse monkeys
"Employees have told us they enjoy having the option to join in these workstation games"
They would enjoy it more if you allowed them to use the warehouse elevators, instead of having to climb the stairs.
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" They would enjoy it more if you allowed them to use the warehouse elevators, instead of having to climb the stairs.
Sure.., and I bet they also all said they would agree to work form home.. Really!
Look in the mirror (Score:2)
The Facebook effect...? (Score:1)