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Amazon to hire 100k warehouse and delivery workers

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Re: Amazon to hire 100k warehouse and delivery workers

#51

We notice delivery on Amazon is out to 3-4 days now (on prime) and were not sure if it was due to supply or demand. Seems like demand.

Demand, I think. I wanted to order a few necessities and an extra thing (pizza pan). The pizza pan quite likely wouldn't be highly in demand during this (or I'm quite wrong, I don't know) but even with Prime it won't arrive for 4 days.

it's all in the same pick and place system in their warehouses, so i strongly suspect that everything will be impacted in some way.

Re: Amazon to hire 100k warehouse and delivery workers

#53
post #11

From what I heard (5th hand info) in China, most of the restaurant workers went to work for eCommerce and food delivery jobs.

No need to couch it in such qualifications, although your information is a bit old. The Chinese delivery companies (Meituan, eleme) indeed went on a temp hiring spree for idle restaurant workers during the shutdown. That was a month ago; things are thawing out now.

Re: Amazon to hire 100k warehouse and delivery workers

#55
post #33

Buy Amazon stocks?

Not on the basis of retail demand. Their retail margins are horrible, as with most of the industry.

AWS and advertising are where their margin and profit centers are.

In terms of retail support action - Costco's stock is one of the few large companies that hasn't cratered. It's not much lower than its average for the year, whereas most everything else has been hammered.

You could double Amazon's retail sales in the US and it will get you a few extra billion dollars in profit. The problem is retail makes up a very modest share of their overall profitability. So it won't move the needle much on a $840 billion market cap. It works for Costco because essentially all of their market cap is based on retail sales and the demand surge they're seeing. So you get a direct IV line between the crazy panic buying and the COST stock. Although, if there are supply problems coming up next, be careful holding COST as well.

Re: Amazon to hire 100k warehouse and delivery workers

#58

I mean, here in Brooklyn you literally cannot order AmazonFresh. No delivery slots no matter how far in the future you scroll. And it's been this way for at least a couple of days now. So makes sense.

Another comment here says all Fresh delivery has been stopped at the moment. I assume it has something to do with not being able to stock the store fast enough, let alone deliver it. Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22597969

Fresh doesn't seem to have stopped deliveries here (Seattle area), but it's hard to find a delivery slot -- all of the delivery slots appear to be booked up 3 days out. I have a delivery scheduled for Wednesday.

They were out of a lot of things, but still had enough for a 'normal' round of groceries, I didn't find everything I usually buy, but they had adequate substitutes. Refrigerated/frozen goods seem the hardest to find.

Re: Amazon to hire 100k warehouse and delivery workers

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably Amazon is aware that if health officials shut down their warehouses, their entire retail business goes to hell. It's in their best interest to be hypervigilant.

If Amazon even meets a bump on the road in terms of its logistical performance, and merely due to acts of chance and nothing they could have anticipated, then the whole nation would be put on edge. How would lockdown even make sense without Amazon's logistics reassuring the population?

You have to do it the old fashioned way, pre Internet. Restricted & spaced lines at physical stores or supply locations. Take/get a number access to shopping resupply at stores or supply zones that are cleaned frequently. You move into a real quarantine program. This sit at home and order stuff from Amazon approach, isn't anywhere near that.

It would require the US military and national guard to implement and keep functioning properly. You need someone with huge scale, federal power (overrule local bullshit), and national reach to ensure safety, supply, delivery and make hard decisions as they crop up.

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