401–410 of 865 posts
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Exactly the reason why there aren't any Software Developer Unions these days.
You're kidding, right? Programmers are decently paid but should strike for a 40-hour work week.
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Interesting comparison. In this case, people aren't unionizing for essentially the opposite reason. Rather than state provided social welfare, their needs are satisfied through this capitalistic solution. Employees are empowered and rewarded through their work.
I'm not sure if you can call this capitalistic, though. WF as a commune could likely share many of the benefits or exceed them even without requiring shareholders to satisfy. Instead, a devotion to profits will ensure they are given the minimum to execute their job well. It'll be interesting to see what bezos does with it for sure.
Look at airlines--exec bonuses used to include metrics such as "customer satisfaction" and today those metrics are gone and only profits count. Nothing changed with capitalism, though. It's the asshole MBAs that changed.
Aw, poor Blue Apron.
Blue Apron is not a good company relative to the other meal kit delivery services anyway. Their recipes are overly simplistic and their whole experience using UX dark patterns limiting which meals one can get in combination turned me off, and misleading people regarding cancellation. The higher quality meal kits like Home Chef won't have this problem because they give you, for about the same price, more complex recip…
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Really? Slack is bringing in 150m/yr. They can't make money with that product at that rate?
Of course they can, but an extremely profitable well-oiled small company rarely gets acquired. You need to have way more employees than necessary and running at a loss. Slack runs a chat app and has 870 employees . It's beyond absurd.
Not saying you're wrong, just that there's overhead for software as it scales for enterprises.
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who the fuck has a 401K and is interested in short term returns?
You know at some point the 401k is supposed to be paying your bills, yes? That's its raison d'être. When you have investments paying your bills, you might understandably be focused on those investments yielding some immediate returns. Maybe to pay for that leaky roof, or broken down AC...
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In the 1880s Bismarck increased the modern welfare state (it was called State Socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Socialism_(Germany) ). The idea was that, if the poor people can get some form of social welfare from the existing state, they're less likely to support a proper socialist/communist revolution. Sounds like that. People won't unionise when they don't think they need to.
Exactly the reason why there aren't any Software Developer Unions these days.
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I would definitely guess not. Why would Amazon pick and pack from a retail store and not a distribution center? And what does Instacart bring to the table? Amazon already has a website and seems to have no trouble building gigantic on-demand workforces. What else does Instacart have? I would guess close to 100% of Instacart users already use Amazon for things as well. I don't see things ending up well for Instacart a…
I'm thinking that the grocery store would be the distribution center. I don't know what their transportation lanes look like but most produce just goes from the field to the grocery store. If you're already storing it there, why put it in a distro center when these stores are in the same locations. Instacart brings a userbase. Heck, maybe Amazon just buys Instacart as well. Not sure if amazon's FCs are currently equi…
They already have the infrastructure in place to replace Instacart overnight.
Every Instacart shopper currently working for Instacart hates Instacart. Amazon can just hire them all away, run their own logistics, profit.
That's not to say it won't be worse than Instacart. It most definitely will be.
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The idea that I can't criticize pathological behaviors by investors because I myself invest in things makes about as much sense as saying I can't criticize bad US policies because I live in the US.
Love it or leave it! /s
Oof. I wonder what this means for Whole Foods culture and employees. If you don't know, John Mackey, the CEO / founder, is a major believer in conscious capitalism and of empowering his employees. Whole Food employees get paid pretty darn well with some crazy good benefits for their industry and line-of-work (UNION FREE most of the time too!). WF banks on them being true believers and motivators of the cause - includ…
Amazon made its name by shipping consumer hard goods. It continues to do well with non-perishable items. But this nut is the Everest of retail. It will be a challenge to get it to fit into their model.
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I think Zappos is a probably a pretty good proxy. They too had a very different culture to Amazon at the time of acquisition, but I believe it has largely remained intact many years post-acquisition. Amazon as a company has many flaws in its culture (if we are to believe the reports), but they seem to do acquisitions pretty well and know when to leave things alone and let them do their thing.
There's also Woot.com - a company who's culture was a strange counterpoint. Amazon thought they understood it, messed it all around and now it's a sad parody of the former site. https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2014/july/... That particular bit about Bezos and the octopus sells it - You'll be fine if Amazon "gets" your company and it's culture. If not, well...