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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

#211

Post by Supermancho »

surement wrote: post #192
throw0101a wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we raise min wage then they'll just fire people to make up the cost […] Dropping employment due to higher (minimum) wages has mixed-data in empirical studies: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage#Empirical_studies

While the comment you're replying to is wrong, these empirical studies are ridiculous. Every price has some elasticity, but the fact is that if a worker earns an employer $8 an hour in revenue, they're not going to pay that worker $9 an hour, and if the minimum wage was greater than $8 an hour, then that worker would be out of a job, thus making $0 an hour. The studies about the price elasticity of labor also don't b…

> Being unemployed is not better than making a low wage.

In the US, it depends on the programs that are available to you. For some people, a small part time job sabotages some existing subsidies. This is a critical component of the institutional poverty, that is now generational, in the US.

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

#213

Post by XorNot »

azemetre wrote: post #31
crikeyjoe wrote: post #8

There's no shortage of workers, there's a shortage of workers wanting to work for Amazon.

It's kind of interesting because Amazon has built a reputation for being absolutely ruthless to their workers (not just delivery or warehouse). You have the notorious NYT article from 2015 (the article mentions this): https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-... The online perception is that it has only gotten worse. It doesn't take much to find stories on teamblind, twitter, reddit, or even hacker…

Skip sense of decency this is just downright stupid: a worker with an urgent medical issue needed time off for it. They had accrued leave, but you don't let them take it. They resolve the issue, come back to work and then you fire then anyway...and what, now have to train a new person up? What the hell was gained by any of that?

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

#214

Post by jaywalk »

corrral wrote: post #151
jaywalk wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can only increase pay so much before they have to increase their fees beyond the point people are willing to pay them. As an anecdote, I have completely stopped using DoorDash because they recently increased their fees to a level that I consider to be absurd.

DoorDash costs have always been absurd, they just hide a lot of it by pricing the food higher than it normally is. I've noticed our grocery delivery services doing that, too, giving us prices on items that are higher than they are if you go to the store yourself. We'll stop using them soon. It's bullshit. Delivery costs ought to be transparent. [EDIT] Oh, and places like pizza joints that already had delivery service…

It seems like most of the prices are either equivalent to the restaurant's prices, or only slightly higher. But when I compare DoorDash to UberEats, with the food prices being the same, I have seen $10+ differences in the final total. That's when I dropped DoorDash.

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

#215

Post by micromacrofoot »

This isn't just their warehouse workers, their delivery drivers (many through partner companies) have been struggling with this for a while. They grind through employees fast. Drivers will sometimes just leave their keys in the ignition and walk off the job.

There was a lot of speculation that this is why they dropped the drug testing requirement last year.

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

#216

Post by mikem170 »

alangibson wrote: post #90
ramesh31 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the sad reality. The associated wage stabilization is going to be necessary for us to control inflation. SWEs probably don't need worry about remaining employed, but the days of salary wars will be over.

> The associated wage stabilization is going to be necessary for us to control inflation. It won't. Everyone involved in business dealing with physical goods knows it's a supply side problem. Fiscal policy will do little to control inflation at this time. The Fed of course knows this.

How come Switzerland has only 2.5% year-over-year inflation, less than a third of the U.S. rate?

Last I checked there seemed to be some correlation between a country's money printing and current inflation rates. That's not to say that a protion of the current inflation rate is not due to supply consitrictions, but I certainly not assume that is the only factor.

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

#217

Post by bcassedy »

batmaniam wrote: post #178
azemetre wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of interesting because Amazon has built a reputation for being absolutely ruthless to their workers (not just delivery or warehouse). You have the notorious NYT article from 2015 (the article mentions this): https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-... The online perception is that it has only gotten worse. It doesn't take much to find stories on teamblind, twitter, reddit, or even hacker…

> At what point do we simply ask if Amazon leaders have no sense of decency? We don't need to ask, we already know. Actions speak louder than words anyway, and we've all seen how they treat all their workers: from warehouse to corporate. One would be a bit naive to think only their warehouse workers get treated badly, corporate workers are slapped around just as much in their own way. Even in death, Amazon doesn't ca…

Technically 20 is a number of minutes...

But yeah even as a software engineer I'm often torn about wanting to work for Amazon. They have quite a few interesting projects and the pay is solid, but there are a lot of horror stories out there that suggest it is a brutal place to work even for engineers.

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

#218

Post by kps »

gruez wrote: post #142
sophacles wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's simple, just apply modern capitalism. In this case the rule is: Ford was a genius for realizing his workers need to make enough to buy his product. Anyone else who makes that realization is a dirty commie.

>Ford was a genius for realizing his workers need to make enough to buy his product In what world does it make sense to pay your workers $20k (or whatever), so they can spend $20k on products that your company makes? Factoring in margins you need each dollar paid to your workers to generate $6.66 dollars worth of sales for you for it to break even.

> In what world does it make sense to pay your workers $20k (or whatever), so they can spend $20k on products that your company makes?

A world where you're raising the floor so that everyone else's workers can also spend on the products your company makes.

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

#219

Post by cbsmith »

Dave_Rosenthal wrote: post #204
surement wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the comment you're replying to is wrong, these empirical studies are ridiculous. Every price has some elasticity, but the fact is that if a worker earns an employer $8 an hour in revenue, they're not going to pay that worker $9 an hour, and if the minimum wage was greater than $8 an hour, then that worker would be out of a job, thus making $0 an hour. The studies about the price elasticity of labor also don't b…

I tend to agree with this conventional Econ 101 wisdom, but your comment got me wondering if raising the minimum wage would have an effect of driving people to build skills and push harder. I.e. think of a minimum wage as the government saying to workers, ‘Hey, if you want to be part of this economy, you better be at least X productive.’

It can also drive businesses to develop models where people are more productive. Productivity isn't just a function of skills and how much people "push", but also how businesses operate.

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

#220

Post by kennywinker »

cratermoon wrote: post #145
kennywinker wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "There's a surplus of customer eager to pay the lowest possible price even if that means exploiting workers." This is just wrong. First, Amazon’s prices and their wages for warehouse workers aren’t directly connected. If they were, amazon wouldn’t have posted 200B in profit in 2021. Given the 1.6mil employees, that’s $125k per employee of profit. Amazon could pay MUCH more, and still hold the same prices. Second, t…

> Amazon’s prices and their wages for warehouse workers aren’t directly connected If you can say that, then you can say that Amazon’s prices and the taxes it pays on its revenues aren't directly connected.

I would say that. Raise taxes on corporations. Trickle-down economics is and always has been a lie.
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