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An open letter to Jeff Bezos: A contract worker’s take on Amazon.com

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Re: An open letter to Jeff Bezos: A contract worker’s take on Amazon.com

#131

Post by xyzzyz »

sopooneo wrote: post #127
xyzzyz wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon works hard to have a minuscule profit. If they have no profit, they don't have any tax liability. The business they're in lets them adjust their profits in real time -- whenever they expect to have large profit, they just lower their prices to eat it. Consumers love this, so they have huge turnover, and thanks to this, small increase of prices earns them big profit, if they ever need cash to fund acquisition,…

I don't understand why you'd want to minimize profit just because of tax liability. Even if I paid 60% in taxes, I'd still be better off keeping 40% of a higher salary. What's the rational?

The reason is that it's not the money you actually want. You want the stuff that you can exchange money for -- you want food, shelter, entertainment etc. If you had a choice, get a $10k pay rise, or $10k reimbursement for shopping, you'd obviously go with the second option, since the first one would only give you a certain percentage of that $10k.

There's no reason for a company to pay tax on money it does not need. If they need some money for some current expenses, they can obtain it any time and spend it as an operating expense, which gets them no tax liability. Think of Apple, which has a basically untaxed huge wad of cash outside of the US -- they will keep it there for as long as they don't need more money in the US, to avoid the tax liability. They only keep in the US the money they need, hoping that future changes in tax law will let them save on bringing that pile of cash home.

Re: An open letter to Jeff Bezos: A contract worker’s take on Amazon.com

#133

Post by nknighthb »

grecy wrote: post #90
bmelton wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, there's been nothing to suggest that these were sub-par working conditions. Except for the length of the engagement, which is fairly normal, I don't see anything even remotely unusual about this working arrangement.

Employing someone for 11 months so you can avoid paying benefits is disgusting. Just because it's not "unusual" doesn't make it acceptable.

It's also a moronic move by out-of-touch executives. I saw a stark example with a QA team that was almost entirely temps. The team was at least 2-3x as big as it needed to be because these stupid 6-12 month stints resulted in a continuous stream of new hires who had to be trained from scratch and were completely unmotivated.

Then one day an edict came down from on high that resulted in the sudden termination of several relatively effective temps partway through their programmed stint.

The excuse? "Development is slowing down for a while, we don't need as many."

I literally said "What the fuck?! We're spinning UP!". A couple weeks later they were scrambling to fill the positions again.

Re: An open letter to Jeff Bezos: A contract worker’s take on Amazon.com

#134

Post by smsm42 »

bmelton wrote: post #130
smsm42 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That of course assumes there's a price that is "fair" and you have a magic ability - personally or "as a society" - to figure it out while ignoring the markets (because the markets are "unfair"). I wonder how one does that and doesn't end somewhere in the vicinity of Detroit.

Please explain how the markets are unfair? As for my 'personal' judgement on what is fair, I always defer to those entering the terms of the contract, so long as those contracts abide by law. If you offer me $10 an hour to do something I might ordinarily charge $100 for, and I accept that $10 an hour, and the $10 an hour does not break any law, then to me, that is fair. I am by no means authoritative on the subject t…

I'm not saying the markets are unfair. I'm saying that's what exploitation theory assumes (which theory I am in no way supporting or endorsing) - the base for "exploitation" theory is that the market price diverges from the supposedly "fair" price, and the difference is the measure of "exploitation". This presupposes that a) "fair" price is known and b) it is different from market price.

Re: An open letter to Jeff Bezos: A contract worker’s take on Amazon.com

#135

Post by wdr1 »

nostromo wrote: post #49

> In this terrible economy, I am grateful for the work Seattle's unemployment rate is 4%, which is basically optimal and near what it was before the recession. https://www.google.com/search?q=seattle+unemployment+rate Seattle real-estate has almost completely rebounded. http://www.zillow.com/local-info/WA-Seattle-home-value/r_160... People may not realize it yet, but the recession is over. If Amazon values the work t…

> People may not realize it yet, but the recession is over.

- Median wages are still down from 2009[1]

- Compared to 2000, national unemployment is still up significantly. [2]

The reason so many people may not realize it yet is for them, the recession is still a very real thing.

[1]http://www.nelp.org/page/-/Job_Creation/NELP-Fact-Sheet-Ineq...

[2] https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_...

Re: An open letter to Jeff Bezos: A contract worker’s take on Amazon.com

#136

Post by regal »

sopooneo wrote: post #127
xyzzyz wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon works hard to have a minuscule profit. If they have no profit, they don't have any tax liability. The business they're in lets them adjust their profits in real time -- whenever they expect to have large profit, they just lower their prices to eat it. Consumers love this, so they have huge turnover, and thanks to this, small increase of prices earns them big profit, if they ever need cash to fund acquisition,…

I don't understand why you'd want to minimize profit just because of tax liability. Even if I paid 60% in taxes, I'd still be better off keeping 40% of a higher salary. What's the rational?

Lower prices (and hence, profits) don't just save on taxes monies - they also drive out the competition, expanding Amazon's footprint in the marketplace.

Growth first, money later.

Re: An open letter to Jeff Bezos: A contract worker’s take on Amazon.com

#137

Post by saalweachter »

sopooneo wrote: post #127
xyzzyz wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon works hard to have a minuscule profit. If they have no profit, they don't have any tax liability. The business they're in lets them adjust their profits in real time -- whenever they expect to have large profit, they just lower their prices to eat it. Consumers love this, so they have huge turnover, and thanks to this, small increase of prices earns them big profit, if they ever need cash to fund acquisition,…

I don't understand why you'd want to minimize profit just because of tax liability. Even if I paid 60% in taxes, I'd still be better off keeping 40% of a higher salary. What's the rational?

It's the difference between a business and an individual. Individuals pay taxes on incomes. Corporations pay taxes on profits, so they can have arbitrarily large incomes while maintaing zero profits.

"Profit" is either "money you haven't spent yet" or "money you need to return to investors". Modern corporations have been telling investors to eat a bag of salted peanuts lately, so they really don't care about returning profits to investors. So if "profit" is just "money you haven't spent yet", you're better off spending it before you pay taxes, because then you get to spend X% more.

The individuals running the company are presumably compensating themselves lavishly to run a company with no profits.

Re: An open letter to Jeff Bezos: A contract worker’s take on Amazon.com

#138

Post by ryanobjc »

ceol wrote: post #91
ryanobjc wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to say if specifically someone did a cost/benefit/value analysis. But when you work in a culture of doing things that are frugal, cheap, and those are rewarded, you will be rewarded for doing things that SEEM frugal and cheap. So even if there is long term value reduction, no one realizes this, or has done the math, and thus it seems like Amazon is saving a butt-load. After all, the face value (in terms of…

> you will be rewarded for doing things that SEEM frugal and cheap. It's exactly this. Temps are used because they appear to be saving money when reported to The Boss (whoever that may be.) People seem to forget the majority of folks in these companies only care about what they need to do to keep their jobs, so if HR needs to appear to spend less money, they're going to utilize the easiest method for that to happen.…

And don't forget corporate accounting is rarely done in a 'total cost accounting' manner. Estimations and fast heuristics are everywhere.

For example, FTE cost more than contractors. This is a corporate "fact". The long term cost, which is often semi-monetary and the accounting systems don't have a process to calculate this.

Re: An open letter to Jeff Bezos: A contract worker’s take on Amazon.com

#139

Post by kilroy123 »

general_failure wrote: post #117
kilroy123 wrote: post #71

I was a contract developer at a very large "shoe and apparel company". I saw the same thing. Low quality / skilled developers were hired on in droves. Only to "train" other new contractors. (e.g. copy all these files from my machine and do these 30 steps, and then the local environment should work) They were hiring guys right out of India. Which made team communication difficult. It was a mess, and code quality reall…

How is the shoe company doing? I bet they are doing just the same...

Revenue is way up actually.

Re: An open letter to Jeff Bezos: A contract worker’s take on Amazon.com

#140

Post by ryanobjc »

potatolicious wrote: post #88
garybizzle wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author also mentions "Although it may seem like the company is saving money — because you don’t have to provide temporary workers with medical coverage or paid vacation time." I just want to point out that contractors actually cost the company MORE money than employees, on average around $30k/year per worker. I think the main reason contractors are used is because many full-time employees "settle" somewhat and do…

I used to work for Amazon, in a different department than the author, and I agree with this part. My old team employed two contractors "in perpetuity", to my protestations, and the reason wasn't monetary. Not directly anyways. At the time (circa 2009-10) upper management was freaking out about the economic downturn. Hiring caps were put in place, and every team was watched like a hawk for "unnecessary" headcount. Bri…

Another thing is don't forget that Amazon is a cult of personality. The cult of Bezos. Upper management needs to cater to that cult, and it creates a lot of noise that may or may not be making the product or the company better.

Some of Bezos's urges and reactions are good, some are bad. It's not too much unlike Microsoft.

As a species we can do a better job at running companies!

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