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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

#271

Post by syshum »

dekhn wrote: post #246
TheSoftwareGuy wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It would be funny if everyone thinks they used this sophisticated technology or supercomputer when in reality it was just someone with an excel workbook at ton of vba code

/s

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

#272

Post by taurath »

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…

> So aside from “just stop buying from Amazon” what can we do ?

Lobby your congressperson to break up Amazon and all the other big tech companies. Prevent them from bundling, vertically integrating, and using loss leading products to make all competitors not competitive.

Make their delivery network its own company who takes orders from other suppliers. Make their storefront and warehouses its own entity. Make their media organization stand on its own. People smarter than me can figure this out.

Make policy that punishes national and international companies and favors local businesses, and keeps the taxbase local rather than in Delaware.

Ultimately there's little that one can do with this hyper concentrated economy other than push for and join the political wave against concentration.

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

#273

Post by 14u2c »

dekhn wrote: post #246
TheSoftwareGuy wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

In this context it sounds like supercomputer would more analogous to mainframe.

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

#274

Post by haunter »

xfalcox wrote: post #128

It's bizarre. I'm not even american but Amazon is such a big part of my day to day life. - At work we use AWS - Amazon uses my company software - My wife is a retailer and now sells on Amazon - During work I use Twitch.TV as background noise (Amazon bought Twitch.TV) - Last week, after work I was playing the new Amazon MMO game. - After dinner I was watching The Office on Amazon Prime

One of the main reason I slowly started removing american media (movies, music, series, books, games etc) from my life a decade ago or so

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

#275

Post by kelnos »

quantum_magpie wrote: post #143
hosh wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the heart of “Aggregation Theory” from the stratechary blog. That these companies amass their market power by making their product so easy to use, they aggregate demand and are able to squeeze suppliers. They hold monopolistic power, but it is hard to argue that they “harm consumers”. Unlike old school monopolies, consumers go to aggregators because they want to, not because they are forced to.

>consumers go to aggregators because they want to, not because they are forced to. Recently I wanted to buy 10-ish dead tree books in English and get them shipped to an eastern EU country. Going through the first 20~ DDG results of online stores exactly zero would ship them here. Also, the local bookstores would have only few books in English, mostly the 'bestseller'-type stuff. Amazon was the only place that would h…

I think the statement you're replying to is more talking about staple items, not long-tail items. Things like toilet paper, toothpaste, shoes, etc. should be widely-available from local stores (both online and brick-and-mortar), and yet people still go to the aggregators for them, because it's easier and gives them predictable pricing, delivery, and quality.

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

#276

Post by ethbr0 »

brutus1213 wrote: post #194
wil421 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget that Amazon still needs almost $200 billion more in revenue to beat Walmart. They have $550 billion in revenue and don’t have something like AWS. Amazon has only recently pioneered last mile logistics. It still isnt that great. I’m in a large metro area and 25-50% of my packages do not meet the prime delivery dates. I’d argue Walmart is still the king of logistics, for now.

Out of all the retailers I have experience with, the pandemic winner was Walmart (Canada) hands-down. They kept iterating their app and pickup experience (order via app and they put the groceries in your trunk) .. I am an extremely satisfied customer and have increased my spend there! Losers for me were Home Depot and Canadian Tire. They iterated slowly and when they did, made things worse it seemed.

I'm not a frequent Walmart delivery customer, but my impression was they didn't take buy-online/ship-to-home or buy-online/ship-to-store seriously until the Jet acquisition. Which Walmart bought in 2016?

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

#277

Post by taurath »

drorco wrote: post #203
shakezula wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So aside from “just stop buying from Amazon” what can we do ? 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. It will take massive government action and that's it. There's no other way we can fix this problem. Wages are su…

There's also the other option similar to what happened after the New York Elevator Operator Strike in 1945 -- the total elimination of a profession. https://www.inc.com/thomas-koulopoulos/100-years-ago-we-fear... "It wasn't until the middle of the twentieth century that the tipping point came along for the driverless elevator as the result of a strike by the elevator operators' union in New York City in 1945. The str…

I think a fully automated amazon without a large local workforce and therefor a large local TAXBASE is going to be a huge target for regulatory enforcement.

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

#278

Post by hokumguru »

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #267
shakezula wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So aside from “just stop buying from Amazon” what can we do ? 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. It will take massive government action and that's it. There's no other way we can fix this problem. Wages are su…

> A lot of rural communities have no other viable options for some items as well. I sometimes fantasize about what it would be like to live in a mild-to-moderately isolated community - moving to Hawaii, northern Alaska, some random island. It's fascinating reading blogs by people who live there, and many of them have a "So You Want to Move to _____" type of post. In virtually all of them, there is some comment along…

After having just taken my first trip to the big island I was actually very surprised how sparse the retail was. Felt very much like rural America.

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

#279

Post by mahathu »

xfalcox wrote: post #128

It's bizarre. I'm not even american but Amazon is such a big part of my day to day life. - At work we use AWS - Amazon uses my company software - My wife is a retailer and now sells on Amazon - During work I use Twitch.TV as background noise (Amazon bought Twitch.TV) - Last week, after work I was playing the new Amazon MMO game. - After dinner I was watching The Office on Amazon Prime

Such a pretty house

And such a pretty garden

And no alarms and no surprises

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

#280

Post by Hikikomori »

drorco wrote: post #203
shakezula wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So aside from “just stop buying from Amazon” what can we do ? 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. It will take massive government action and that's it. There's no other way we can fix this problem. Wages are su…

There's also the other option similar to what happened after the New York Elevator Operator Strike in 1945 -- the total elimination of a profession. https://www.inc.com/thomas-koulopoulos/100-years-ago-we-fear... "It wasn't until the middle of the twentieth century that the tipping point came along for the driverless elevator as the result of a strike by the elevator operators' union in New York City in 1945. The str…

Should these menial, easily automated jobs in a low margin business exist in the future?
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