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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

#341

Post by toast0 »

pojzon wrote: post #300
femto113 wrote: post #289

Amazon's scale encounters limits that most companies don't ever have to consider. There's a parallel from 20ish years ago: Amazon eschewed software performance engineering with the mantra "if it can be solved with a credit card [i.e. you can buy more hardware] don't worry about it now". That worked up to the day they called the company that made their database server and asked to upgrade and were told "you already ha…

In single master architecture this is inevitable. At some point you wont be able to throw more hardware. Thats why multi-master architecture was created in the first place.

A lot of big companies went through that, I've seen presentations about eBay running out of scaling room on their Oracle servers in their boom.

Otoh, maximum database server today is a ton bigger. Looking at just Supermicro, you can get 8 TB ram in a dual Epyc server, and 24 TB in exotic, but still off the shelf systems. You can get a lot of qps with 24 TB of ram and a whole bunch of cores.

If you go with Oracle, they'll sell you a Sparc server with 48 TB of ram, and 384 CPU cores.

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

#342

Post by dhosek »

formercoder wrote: post #226
hotpotamus wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also found it quite hard to predict things, especially about the future. So I have a hard time being mad at the fed on that account.

If anyone that worked at the fed could predict the future, they wouldn’t work at the fed.

The future is notoriously difficult to predict.

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

#343

Post by usr1106 »

xwdv wrote: post #190

I’d suggest rather than paying by the hour, Amazon should switch to paying workers by the task. They have the data to work out a profitable rate. This gives workers the ability to self regulate how lazy or efficient they’d like to be.

Don't know about the US, but it would be illegal in many countries if workers don't reach the minimum wage despite working full-time. Of course they could fire slow workers (at least in the US, in Europe it's often not that easy), but then they are back at the problem of the submission: running out of workers

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

#344

Post by noobker »

SoftTalker wrote: post #329
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…

This is not unusual at all. My first job as a developer was with a big consulting firm. Undergraduate seniors were hired en masse every year as entry-level staff consultants. The expectation (not stated, but not hard to figure out) was that many would leave within a few years. Some would remain and get promoted, even fewer would stick around long enough to be considered for partnership. The work hours were long (50 h…

> It's not the sort of thing someone does for a lifetime.

Quite literally, not with that attitude. So many of capitalism's pitfalls amount to no more than self-fulfilling prophecies.

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

#345

Post by robbyking »

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 have a friend who was an engineer at Amazon, and it sounds like tech jobs at Amazon are a nightmare, too.

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

#346

Post by ipaddr »

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.

Cars are this big advertising moving billboard. Car companies employee thousands who work in cities built around these plants. Having employees driving around earning high paying wages spending it around town has a big influence on the rest of the town/region.

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

#347

Post by madrox »

dixie_land wrote: post #336
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.

ironically in this down turn Amazon offers are extremely appealing since your first two years are all cash. So you shore up on your cash while your future vesting have an upside if the recession is short lived.

Yes, their comp plans have changed in the last couple years because the stock isn't as exciting as it used to be. A couple years ago, it wasn't like this.

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

#348

Post by ryan93 »

jodrellblank wrote: post #221
PKop wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's zero sum. You're hurting your fellow citizens by diluting their labor. You may think this is a righteous position, but from the perspective of a nationalist, you are strictly harming not helping your fellow countrymen, and therefore you set yourself up as their enemy. >only cares about And the prosperity of their own country. It is "selfish" yes. But a selfishness that extends out to their kin and their neighbor…

> " You're hurting your fellow citizens by diluting their labor " No more so than having children and growing the population that way, which is a concept the right generally supports ("family values", "pro life"). > " you are strictly harming not helping your fellow countrymen " It's not like the right do things to help fellow countrymen; taking away rights ("pro choice"), scorning single mothers instead of helping t…

How many pro immigration leftists live their life as if its no more valuable than anyone else's? .001% maybe.If you wanted to help the global poor sending them American dollars would go a lot further in their own country

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

#349

Post by honkycat »

mc32 wrote: post #102
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...

Those idiots! Everyone and their mother knew that printing money since 2008 was going to blow up one day. Technology and unsubstantiated sectors allowed them to print without repercussions for a while and the administration and them also tried to fool people into believing the inflation was transitory... Reckless idiots. And now wage labor is the one to suffer most. 4TT in spending for BBB? Uhhuh! Even Yellen said it…

4T is a big number but when I look at the details it all seems very reasonable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Build_Back_Better_Plan#Origina...

Honest question: How are we supposed to maintain our civilization without some government spending?

Is climate change going to fix itself? Is our infrastructure going to modernize itself? We need to migrate to EVs and build out energy infrastructure.

What is going to happen to aging and disabled people? The current answer appears to be to have them live in the streets.

The country's 1% currently own 70% of the wealth. I think they can handle some taxation, especially when those taxes are going to be used to modernize our infrastructure.

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

#350

Post by 99_00 »

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…

>figure out that they are getting a bad deal.

That's not what it's "really saying". That's you adding analysis.

I think hourly workers are perfectly capable of figuring out if a job is a good or bad deal for them.

They have bills and payments that must be made or they will suffer real consequences. They aren't making employment decisions based on free soda, foosball tables, and the political affiliation of the CEO.

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