111–120 of 239 posts
> Amazon said earlier this month it had hired an additional 100,000 employees Not the main point of the article, but can I just say that's huge . That's... the same size as Google's entire full-time workforce. Granted they're low-skill warehouse positions, not highly paid engineering jobs, but still. The ability of a company to hire one hundred thousand people in a month is absolutely insane.
> Amazon said earlier this month it had hired an additional 100,000 employees Not the main point of the article, but can I just say that's huge . That's... the same size as Google's entire full-time workforce. Granted they're low-skill warehouse positions, not highly paid engineering jobs, but still. The ability of a company to hire one hundred thousand people in a month is absolutely insane.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it’s not the “working classes” like Marx liked to predict but social/political systems What's the difference, exactly? the social/political systems create the group of under-paid, under-served people. Call them working class or not, the problem is still there. In the US, employers pay drastically less for physical labor than knowledge work, government does not offer a social safety net, and social services are offe…
Like you can actually vote? Like there are more than two parties with the same take on social security? So you are telling me that the system in the US is like how the majority of people want it or that people have no say in the system?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The United States hasn't even passed the first stage of Corona yet (in SF, daily number of deaths is still rising). It is too early to mandate come backs. That isn't true according to the numbers from https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en . Do you have a citation for that? Numbers for new deaths have been hovering between 0 and 5 for the last month in SF, SF has had a total of 22 people dead, due to successful lo…
> SF has had a total of 22 people dead, due to successful lockdown measures it basically never hit SF. That appears to be false. SF has had corona since Dec. and a large percentage of the population were exposed months ago. Lockdown at this point is just theater.
Wildly irreaponsible and unqualified statement. Please stop being part of the problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it’s not the “working classes” like Marx liked to predict but social/political systems What's the difference, exactly? the social/political systems create the group of under-paid, under-served people. Call them working class or not, the problem is still there. In the US, employers pay drastically less for physical labor than knowledge work, government does not offer a social safety net, and social services are offe…
Like you can actually vote? Like there are more than two parties with the same take on social security? So you are telling me that the system in the US is like how the majority of people want it or that people have no say in the system?
People (normal people, anyway) generally have a lot less say in that system than you seem to think. I don't get to vote on whether or not a major employer offers better pay for physical labor. I don't get to vote on whether or not for-profit schools exist. I don't get to vote on whether or not employers will (consciously or not) discriminate against job applicants who look poor or don't speak eloquently as a result of low-quality education.
Hell, I don't even, really, get to write to my congressperson and tell them they should propose a law that would achieve any of that, because I don't have the money and connections to shepherd that bill through congress (i.e., pay bribes).
Voting for candidates who will work for change is important, but it's not magic, and it's also not something that people who care about this weren't already doing every time we get the chance.
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I'm curious what the percentage is right now.
You can go tour one. The robotics are pretty impressive. It reminded me of the scenes in Beauty and the Beast where the teapots and brooms and candlesticks were all orchestrated together to clean up/set the table/etc.
I think I'll plan one for when we're out of lockdown in my area.
Thanks for the outing idea!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The United States hasn't even passed the first stage of Corona yet (in SF, daily number of deaths is still rising). It is too early to mandate come backs. That isn't true according to the numbers from https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en . Do you have a citation for that? Numbers for new deaths have been hovering between 0 and 5 for the last month in SF, SF has had a total of 22 people dead, due to successful lo…
> SF has had a total of 22 people dead, due to successful lockdown measures it basically never hit SF. That appears to be false. SF has had corona since Dec. and a large percentage of the population were exposed months ago. Lockdown at this point is just theater.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What's a few avoidable deaths between friends, after all? Amazon is about as close to the ideal of an "essential employer" as anyone is, though. They're shipping a huge amount of food and other essentials. Objectively, a package delivered through a managed professional environment is less risky and involves fewer potential transmission events than one purchased at retail. Online sellers, where they have product to…
Like I said, they can fix the problem. It sounds like they're trying, but it's not proven that they've gotten all the way. In the past they were clearly inadequate and it's why employees went on strike and publicly protested. "Essential employees" shouldn't be put at risk just because people need them to ship stuff out. We shouldn't put "essential employees"' immune-compromised relatives at risk either.
But... isn't that what "essential" means? No one claims this is fair. It's not fair that as software developers we get an automatic pass to continue our careers working from home while our bartender friends have to file for unemployment either.
But at the end of the day we need stuff to live. Someone needs to run the power and intenet and water infrastructure. And someone needs to deliver goods to people who need them.
I mean: I agree we need to make this better for those folks. I just don't see how Amazon demanding essential workers come to work is the wrong thing here.
This seems reasonable and beyond what other major employers are offering, but as is the fashion I'm sure Amazon will be convicted in the court of public interwebs shortly...
Disagree. Amazon is doing pretty well due to the quarantine (as they deserve to given the services they provide). Them having to reduce their share of the profits from these extraordinary times is not particularly noble, but rather just average. The United States hasn't even passed the first stage of Corona yet (in SF, daily number of deaths is still rising). It is too early to mandate come backs. Here in SF, multipl…
Considering multiple states are larger than many European countries, I don't think it's appropriate to treat the US as a monolithic entity with respect to virus containment. Even if all of the states reacted identically, time and space dictate that different regions will be in different stages at any given time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it’s not the “working classes” like Marx liked to predict but social/political systems What's the difference, exactly? the social/political systems create the group of under-paid, under-served people. Call them working class or not, the problem is still there. In the US, employers pay drastically less for physical labor than knowledge work, government does not offer a social safety net, and social services are offe…
Like you can actually vote? Like there are more than two parties with the same take on social security? So you are telling me that the system in the US is like how the majority of people want it or that people have no say in the system?