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1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

businessinsider.com

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Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#241

Post by foobiekr »

kungito wrote: post #231
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"being a temp for future robots" While everyone was predicting that the dirty jobs would get automated, instead its a lot of midlevel jobs are getting automated, but we still don't have a robot that can take out the trash. I am willing to bet my house thay we can automate away the CEO but not the janitor, and it will be hilarious. Management is just analysis of data, we can do that. But the physical works requires de…

Management isn't analysis of data, it is making a decision based on that analysis. A completely different and more complex problem. One could argue that the border between the two is unclear but we have for sure been automatizing the analysis and we are nowhere near removing the managers. Maybe we could say we have removed layers of management though

I'm with the bet-the-house guy. I've worked for huge organizations since 1990 and I really think that even a mid-grade student project could make decisions as well as the management I've known, which includes multiple Fortune 50 CEOs. When I say "known" I mean "known" and not "been ten layers under."

What I think will happen is CEOs will be glorified actors that are tasked with delivering the decisions some ML system has made. It'll be like the "white guy in a suit" role that some Chinese companies have.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#242

Post by ProAm »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #218
ProAm wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "just stop buying amazon" arguments never made sense to me in the first place, because most people who use it are the ones budget-stretched in the first place. A lot of rural communities have no other viable options for some items as well. They've become the new Walmart, they killed off all other options so now its the only place left for a lot of people.

> they killed off all other options Is it that difficult to imagine the amount of value it created for those communities, too?

Walmart is known as a town killer, Amazon is an industry killer.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#244

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

Buttons840 wrote: post #200
underseacables wrote: post #72

I’m torn badly with Amazon. After read The Everything Store, and what has been written all over the place, Jeff Bezos is a massive turd. Employees are horribly treated, wages suppressed, and all sorts of terrible and abusive practices. Then it comes time for me to buy something. I needed a new pair of size 14 sneakers. I drove to Adidas, Footlocker, dicks, and a few other stores but I just couldn’t justify $100 sneak…

Half the reason I use Amazon is there web app doesn't suck. If I go to Walmart's website it will be ugly and slow and I'm not confident it will work well on my phone. Why can't Walmart get this right? I'm fine buying from Walmart and having them store my CC info like Amazon does, it's only that poor web app experience holding me back. Maybe someone can make an Amazon competitor that is just a decent shopping app. I d…

walmart.com is rebadged jet.com. It isn't a clusterfuck with a tech debt extending back to the 00's like the old walmart site.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#245

Post by ekianjo »

shakezula wrote: post #95
missedthecue wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you accuse them of suppressing wages when they lead the way to $15/hr, and when they literally spend money lobbying congress to raise the federal minimum wage? https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-15-minimum-wage-lobby...

Because they participate in union busting? https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/03/09/amazon-...

Because if they don't, it's the end? You can't seriously expect corporations to welcome unions?

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#246

Post by dekhn »

TheSoftwareGuy wrote: post #104
ethbr0 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is Amazon because they didn't let size dull their edge. Unfortunately, that cuts both ways. There are a lot of ways to be exploitive, to your and your customers' benefits, when you're a $113 B revenue/quarter company, that simply aren't available when you're a startup. Hell, Walmart pioneered the "How'd you like to sell in our stores?" + "You need to reduce prices, or it'd be a shame if we, your biggest custom…

> Amazon pioneered hyperscale logistics efficiencies Actually, I believe that was Walmart as well: >TIMMER: I used to ask my class, I’m talking 1985, “Where is the world’s largest supercomputer?” And the correct answer was, “It’s at the Pentagon.” Okay. “Where is the world’s second largest supercomputer?” Bentonville, Ark. Home of Walmart. They used that computer to track every single item on every single Walmart she…

Um the pentagon didn't have the world's largest supercomputer, and neither did walmart. walmart wouldn't buy a supercomputer to do logistics, as supercomputers are super expensive for modest speed improvements and you didn't need them to do supply chain optimization, and anyway, product tracking is a DB problem, not a supercomputer problem.

What's sad is that there probably is some interesting IT story behind Walmart scaling, but not using supercomputers and using PCs or somethign instead.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#247

Post by prostoalex »

underseacables wrote: post #72

I’m torn badly with Amazon. After read The Everything Store, and what has been written all over the place, Jeff Bezos is a massive turd. Employees are horribly treated, wages suppressed, and all sorts of terrible and abusive practices. Then it comes time for me to buy something. I needed a new pair of size 14 sneakers. I drove to Adidas, Footlocker, dicks, and a few other stores but I just couldn’t justify $100 sneak…

> Employees are horribly treated, wages suppressed

I never saw the definitive source on this, but around the time when the unionization vote was happening, people claiming experience in the logistics industry described Amazon as a place with low starting wages, but aggressive bonus structure for high performers. They also offered health benefits on day 1, which is unheard of in logistics.

Other warehouses in the area might have different compensation schemes, and people would generally gravitate to the one that suited their work style better.

The unionization vote seemed like it corroborated this thesis - it wasn’t even 52/48, but something definitive, like 70/30 against the union.

Perhaps someone is aware of the data that incorporates take-home compensation with benefits and all, not the base rates advertised in job ads.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#248

Post by ekianjo »

underseacables wrote: post #88
missedthecue wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you accuse them of suppressing wages when they lead the way to $15/hr, and when they literally spend money lobbying congress to raise the federal minimum wage? https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-15-minimum-wage-lobby...

That’s a fair point. I see them as suppressing wages because they open warehouses in small towns, pay $15/hr and then work the person to death so they become dependent on that job. Amazon can totally dominate an area’s workforce and use that to drive wages and benefits down.

> then work the person to death so they become dependent on that job.

Any evidence for this? Especially in COVID times when there's massive unemployment checks programs, if that were remotely true nobody would be working for Amazon right now.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#249

Post by z77dj3kl »

rossmmurray wrote: post #205
runnerup wrote: post #3

I wonder what the largest private employers as % of total labor force have been throughout history. We currently have a labor force of ~160 million people and Walmart employs "1 out of every 72 American workers" or ~1.3%

The UK's National Health Service (NHS) is definitely up there. There are 1.6m people working for NHS and about 41m people of working age in the UK. So that's about 1 in 26 (or 3.9%). Sources: https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-... , https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTGBQ647S

They're a public employer though, no?

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#250

Post by learc83 »

BrissyCoder wrote: post #217
hombre_fatal wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I bought then for $35. They will arrive tomorrow. Shouldn't you wait to see what kind of cheapo $35 shoe arrives tomorrow, one you never got to try on, before you celebrate?

Sounds like he did due-diligence on reviews.

Still a bit early to celebrate. You really can’t trust aggregate review scores these days—even if you scan them with a 3rd party tool.
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