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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

#261

Post by glmdev »

efitz wrote: post #242
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. Why? It just sounds to me that the federal minimum is age isn’t needed; employers will set the wages necessary to attract the employees that they need and are willing to pay for.

It's not needed right _now_, perhaps, but wait a few months or a few years. Next time the job market shifts back to the employers, the incentives will align the other way.

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

#262

Post by LambdaComplex »

dktoao wrote: post #44
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

From what I have heard, they are a terrible company to work for (even for SWE). I could be wrong but that reputation alone has made me ignore most job postings and recruiters reaching out. Even if they could offer me a 20+% pay rise.

I had an internal AWS recruiter message me about a position there once; I just flat-out told him that I had heard so many negative things about their work environment that I had no interest in working there.

(Also, that position would've required relocating to the Washington, DC metro area, which would've been a dealbreaker even if AWS had a great work environment)

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

#263

Post by surement »

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.’

What about teenagers and young adults with no work experience? They are the age groups with the highest levels of unemployment.

https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea10.htm

In fact, very few people earn minimum wage past early adulthood. I don't remember where I got this figure but it was something like 93% of people over the age of 24 make higher than minimum wage. In any case, income is highly correlated with age until retirement ages.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/233184/median-household-...

The motivation to earn skills to make more money is there regardless of minimum wage laws.

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

#264

Post by 22SAS »

Thetawaves wrote: post #248
22SAS wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both the left and the ring wing voters despise work visa programs. There are a few in the US, only H1B's get the hate since it is the most used of all work visa programs, and highly publicized as well.

You should be forthright and acknowledge that H1Bs fill white collar jobs at below market rates. This obviously doesn't apply to agriculture (and other) work visas.

They probably do in crappy places. I am an H1B, work in HFT and can say that in big tech and HFT's, H1B's are paid fairly well, probably in the top tier.

BTW, the L1 visa is even worse. The people bought in via that visa are also paid below market rates, and they are not even allowed to change companies on that visa.

My issue is that people love to shit talk about us, and forget there are other visas, like the L1, that are crappier. Worse is, when some lump all of us "H1B? They are probably low paid", and then I and many of my friends chuckle when we look at we are paid.

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

#265

Post by surement »

Supermancho wrote: post #211
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…

> 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.

I don't know about you but I think there's something wrong with programs that incentivize not working and gaining experience.

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

#266

Post by lisper »

Vladimof wrote: post #244
lisper wrote: post #119

I would not work for Amazon unless my life depended on it (and even then I would have to think twice) but I have to say (reluctantly) that as a customer, both retail and AWS, I absolutely love them. The power that Amazon is acquiring scares the hell out of me, but at the same time, when I need to buy some random thing, no one else even comes close in terms of convenience and reliability. Sometimes I will make an effo…

You should try walmart.com for ordering... they stepped up their game... it's not uncommon for them to do 3 deliveries for a $35 order with free shipping to get you the stuff as fast as possible... Most of the time I wish they would combine items to avoid the waste but that's what they do.

Yeah, I've considered Walmart, but it kind of defeats the purpose for me. It doesn't do a lot of good to replace one monopolistic behemoth with a different monopolistic behemoth.

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

#267

Post by FredPret »

hadlock wrote: post #237
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.

Minimum wage is important when you have more people wanting to work, than jobs. Right now 1 in 300 people just died, a bunch retired, and 3-5% of the remaining workforce is out with covid and/or post-covid syndrome. So right now there are more jobs than workers. Given people's natural inclination towards reproduction, at some point in the future, there will once again be more people than jobs, and minimum wage will o…

As long as people are even mildly productive, economic growth will handily outpace population growth.

This has been going on for a very long time now, which is why we’re all so wildly rich compared to 100 years ago.

My grandparents remembered a time when completely emptying a jar of peanut butter was essential and lavatory paper was counted by the individual sheet. Today I have homeless people refusing my gifts of food.

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

#268

Post by Joe_Boogz »

gigel82 wrote: post #154

I was getting daily recruiting emails on my personal emails, and recently they started sending recruiting emails to my work address. I obviously never signed up for anything with that one, so they must be sourcing them from very shady people somewhere. The recruiter refused to tell me where they sourced my work email from, but she said she'll remove it from their database.

Same here (daily emails).

I've been getting enough of them to start seeing that most of the emails from amazon are generated in some form. A generated recruiting email is pretty much an immediate turn off for me.

Also, they have been very aggressive... going as far as the same recruiter reaching out on a monthly basis despite me telling them I am not interested.

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

#269

Post by lisper »

> Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos saw his warehouse workforce as necessary but replaceable, and feared that workers who remained at the company too long would turn complacent or, worse, disgruntled, according to reporting by the New York Times.

Wow. Think about what this is really saying: Amazon adopts the explicit policy of not wanting their workers to stay on long enough to figure out that they are getting a bad deal.

So it's not that they are running out of people to hire, it's that they are running out of people who have not yet figured out that working for Amazon is a bad deal.

Now I understand why I've been seeing so many commercials lately about how great it is to work for Amazon.

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

#270

Post by cameroncf »

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/…

> I think this article might bury the lede a bit:

When you read that quote carefully it doesn't say that Amazon employees get paid less. It's saying MAX pay at Walmart is $25/hr and MIN pay at Amazon is $18 an hour.

Apples and oranges. Meaningless clickbait.

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