Leaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of people to hire • Hacker News Board

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

#311

Post by chrisseaton » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 6:13 PM UTC

FFRefresh wrote: post #280

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/…

>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. This is a common type of formulation in journalism that often reveals the bias of the journalist. 1. Walmart pays S…

> it's very obvious that this isn't an apples-to-apples comparison

Isn’t that a good thing? What’s your complaint?

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

#312

Post by ruined » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 6:13 PM UTC

andi999 wrote: post #304

ruined wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i mean, if Amazon is getting more out of the worker than it costs to keep them around, that's by definition exploitation. it's silly to avoid the word, it's purely material. how you feel about it is up to you, but the more it sucks for the worker the less they'll like it. it's important that for most people, "voluntary" in this situation involves the threat of fairly immediate homelessness, hunger, and family separat…

Then every non bancrupt company would be exploiting the staff. The definition is no good.

true. why does that make it a bad definition? it is a material relationship, it is okay to call it accurately.

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

#313

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 6:16 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #269

> 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…

[deleted]

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

#314

Post by munk-a » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 6:16 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #163

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/…

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.

That's a pretty awful take - labour exploitation in America is rampant with theft by employer being our largest crime by value. It's probably fair to say that 25/hr isn't what the minimum wage should be set to - but it exists to prevent extreme abuse of employees.

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

#315

Post by babypuncher » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 6:17 PM UTC

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…

If a position cannot pay well enough for the employed to sustain themselves then it should not exist in the first place.

If there literally are not enough jobs that can pay sustainable wages to everyone in need, then we need to rethink how our economy works on a fundamental level.

A system that requires some portion of the population to go hungry or even homeless is ethically indefensible.

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

#316

Post by mbesto » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 6:18 PM UTC

abakker wrote: post #272

bsedlm wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also has the consequence that from the perspective of the employee getting optimized, what Amazon is doing is exploiting them more, faster, better, and for less effort on Amazon's side. Let's not forget that each of us the people are more similar to the employee than we're to Amazon. Though I suppose a lot of people who never have had to be an employee anywhere (e.g. due to being born into enough wealth) wouldn't…

Is paid labor, (historically) above market rate, entered into voluntarily, necessarily exploitative because it includes productivity measures? look, I don't want to work for Amazon, but, I don't think it is exploitation to expect productivity concomitant with wage. I think Amazon has offered poor working conditions. All that said, the market will solve this. I've been told recently by a company providing outsourced h…

> the market will solve this.

I generally agree with this and if the leaked memo is true, then the market is basically solving this now.

In essence, let's say the pool of applicants for warehouse jobs is 1,000,000 million people. Amazon needs 250k of them to operate their biz and the average retention is 1 year. In 4 years, the people who left previously are now looking for jobs and the only option is Amazon. If a warehouse job conditions are that poor, then they will collectively argue for higher pay.

Said another way - Amazon's presumably poor work conditions eventually catches up with them and the market will respond.

If all of this is true, then the underlying issue is the more controversial one (and moral one), which is that the mental/physical damage to workers mind/bodies can't be repossessed.

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

#317

Post by anigbrowl » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 6:18 PM UTC

capableweb wrote: post #299

madrox wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a secret. Engineers are treated this way as well. At my time at Amazon, it was explained to me that this is why their comp structure is so wrapped up in stock and salaries are so low. Unless you keep getting promoted and get more stock, employees will naturally want to leave within four years.

> employees will naturally want to leave within four years That also explains why the breadth of AWS services keep growing, but the depth of the existing ones remains the same. Seems they would, every 4 years, lose a bunch of people with deep knowledge in the existing ones, the ones who'd be able to add new and deep features.

That seems like a good (albeit cynical) strategy to be honest. 80% of your users only care about 20% of the features, and by offering as many different services as possible, you minimize the number of purchasing decisions that customers need to make. Are all your offerings just OK or even mediocre compared to the competition? Yes. Do most customers care? No, as long as it's adequate and doesn't actively cause problems. I can think of many purchase/usage decisions of my own where I prioritize convenience over optimization, because the apparent return from optimization exceeds the apparent cost.

I mean, just look at the Amazon retail operation - everyone agrees that the website is tired, ugly, and slow, but lots of people still do all their shopping from there because they're used to it and it's easier than maintaining accounts with 15 different retailers with 15 different websites. Amazon's bottom line seems to indicate that breadth-first algorithms work well on problems involving human populations.

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

#318

Post by FFRefresh » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 6:19 PM UTC

swatcoder wrote: post #286

FFRefresh wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. This is a common type of formulation in journalism that often reveals the bias of the journalist. 1. Walmart pays S…

I upvoted this for contributing a valuable and insightful clarification about how those two statements relate, but the part where you attribute "tactics" and "bias" to the journalist has no direct evidence and reads like a political meme. You may be convinced of your interpretation, but it's also likely that the journalist isn't rigorous enough to notice the distinction themselves, didn't have access to perfectly com…

Totally fair on the implying bias strictly on the journalist (which may or may not be there).

Regardless of the awareness/intent of the given journalist, I do hope that we can find leaders (whether people/orgs/software) that can help improve our information environment to improve shared sensemaking.

In an ideal world, non-rigorous journalists, arbitrary deadlines, and corner cutting because of school pickups shouldn't impact the clarity of information being shared. That's the world of today, and it leads to a very muddied/confused information environment, but I don't believe it's the only possibility for us.

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

#319

Post by mter » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 6:22 PM UTC

capableweb wrote: post #299

madrox wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a secret. Engineers are treated this way as well. At my time at Amazon, it was explained to me that this is why their comp structure is so wrapped up in stock and salaries are so low. Unless you keep getting promoted and get more stock, employees will naturally want to leave within four years.

> employees will naturally want to leave within four years That also explains why the breadth of AWS services keep growing, but the depth of the existing ones remains the same. Seems they would, every 4 years, lose a bunch of people with deep knowledge in the existing ones, the ones who'd be able to add new and deep features.

That's more promotion oriented architecture and design.

New services/businesses are how you get promoted. Maintenance or incrementally improve existing functionality and you'll never get promoted.

Amazon isn't really alone in that short sightedness though, it's just extra noticeable when combined with high churn

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

#320

Post by irrational » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 6:22 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #163

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/…

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.

Isn’t it? My sister lives in a state where the true minimum wage is federal minimum wage. My teenager and her teenager both work at the same fast food place. My son makes $16/hour, her son makes $7.25/hour.