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Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of people to hire

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Re: Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of people to hire

#181

Post by oh_sigh »

alangibson wrote: post #74
mtnGoat wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always remember there are many sides to most stories. I have a cousin who works at an Amazon warehouse and loves it, he says it’s the funnest and most rewarding job he has had. He’s in his late 40s and has worked all kinda of jobs. His schedule allows him a lot of work life balance, he knows exactly what is expected of him and advancement is possible and also easy to understand. In fact he said he doesn’t understand…

And he'll think that until one day they can him for missing work due to a health issue. This is why I find a lack of solidarity between working people to be somewhere between selfish and disgusting.

I find it disgusting that you think you can take someone's few sentence anecdote about their cousin and think that you know better than both of them about what is good for them.

Re: Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of people to hire

#182

Post by blagie »

youessayyyaway wrote: post #81

I think this article might bury the lede a bit: >Walmart is offering some workers with past warehouse experience as much as $25 an hour. An Amazon executive told Reuters in late 2021 that the company was bumping the average starting wage for new hires in the US to more than $18 an hour, attributing the decision to intense competition among employers. People used to work for Amazon warehouses in the 2010s because $15/…

Amazon does a lot to optimize employee productivity. This has two corollaries:

1) Working for Amazon is no fun. For the same income, employees would prefer an employer where they have more time to relax and have less extreme workloads. If Amazon paid the same wage as a lazy cafe by the beach, guess where workers would prefer to go?

2) Worker productivity is higher, so Amazon can afford to pay more while being competitive with other businesses.

This is a pure economic point. I am not trying to make a veiled moral argument (although I understand how many such arguments could be read into what I wrote).

Re: Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of people to hire

#183

Post by macinjosh »

SecondTimeAgain wrote: post #161
dionian wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's funny to see this dynamic at a time when the federal minimum wage is still stuck at $7.25/hr. If we raise min wage then they'll just fire people to make up the cost, not sure it's going to help

So they're going to fire people to make up the cost of not being able to hire people? Maybe I'm not understanding you're comment.

My understanding is that yes if their growth cannot be maintained because of labor shortages they will have to begin shrinking down to the size the labormarket can bear.

Re: Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of people to hire

#184

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

alangibson wrote: post #22

The Fed is about to induce 3 years worth of rising unemployment by their own estimates, so the days of workers not needing to take crap jobs out of desperation will soon be at an end. https://qz.com/2178359/the-fed-predicts-3-years-of-rising-un...

The Fed has shown they cannot plan 3 years in the future.

The odds they won't find an excuse to reverse course within 3 years seems low.

They talked about reducing the balance sheet for almost a decade and barely made a dent before more than doubling it during the Pandemic.

I will be shocked if in 5 years the Fed's balance sheet isn't substantially higher than it is now.

Re: Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of people to hire

#185

Post by ipaddr »

SecondTimeAgain wrote: post #161
dionian wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's funny to see this dynamic at a time when the federal minimum wage is still stuck at $7.25/hr. If we raise min wage then they'll just fire people to make up the cost, not sure it's going to help

So they're going to fire people to make up the cost of not being able to hire people? Maybe I'm not understanding you're comment.

The comment was insightful.

One part of the company raises wages the other fires to increase profitability and reduce headcount. Both groups get a bonus and the group in charge of productivity get culled. Welcome to 2022

Re: Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of people to hire

#186

Post by jppope »

no_wizard wrote: post #9

This is specifically in reference to warehouse workers, not the tech side of things. Though I've heard from many recently ex-Amazon engineers that they're having real trouble recruiting engineers now too

I feel like this post by Matthew Prince sums it up => https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/1537541459137548290

Re: Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of people to hire

#187

Post by esaym »

kzrdude wrote: post #169
SoftTalker wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shows that a true minimum wage is not something the government can mandate. There is a natural minimum wage that the market determines. It depends on (at least) the nature of the work and the supply of potential employees. For warehouse work, it's apparently over 2x what the government says it should be.

The purpose of minimum wage is a floor, not that someone has to make that level. If everyone makes more, good.

>The purpose of minimum wage is a floor,

It goes deeper than that. There was a documentary that leaked a new Walmart employee going through their initial first day orientation. If you were a new hire and were married and/or had children, you got extra "orientation" on all the government benefits you now qualified for (welfare, food stamps, medicaid, etc) since you were now considered below the USA poverty line.

I am fine with letting the market regulate itself, but it is not ok that a company can pay employees low because the government will pick up the other half. That is not "self regulation".

Re: Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of people to hire

#188

Post by lotsofpulp »

kennywinker wrote: post #174
lotsofpulp wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMZN did not have $200B profit in 2021. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/net-in...

Amazon annual gross profit for 2021 was $197.478B, a 29.28% increase from 2020. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/gross-...

There is no reason to ignore fixed costs (aka using “gross profit”) for the purpose of calculating how much extra cash a company could be paying its employees. Net income (aka profit) is the extra cash flow that could have been spent.

Re: Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of people to hire

#189

Post by idiotsecant »

dionian wrote: post #150
youessayyyaway wrote: post #81

I think this article might bury the lede a bit: >Walmart is offering some workers with past warehouse experience as much as $25 an hour. An Amazon executive told Reuters in late 2021 that the company was bumping the average starting wage for new hires in the US to more than $18 an hour, attributing the decision to intense competition among employers. People used to work for Amazon warehouses in the 2010s because $15/…

> It's funny to see this dynamic at a time when the federal minimum wage is still stuck at $7.25/hr. If we raise min wage then they'll just fire people to make up the cost, not sure it's going to help

When are they going to start firing people to make up for the actual effective minimum wage being above 15 bucks for some time now? where I live is not even a particularly high COL area but fast food places hire for 16-17 an hour. They aren't hiring fewer people, they are struggling to hire, in fact! There is so much demand for workers that those places can't convince them to work for double the minimum wage given the crappy conditions they require. The idea that a rising minimum wage will result in lower employment, given that the current wage is lower in real terms than it was 30 years ago, makes absolutely no sense - the real world evidence is literally all around us right now.
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