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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

#371

Post by jstummbillig »

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…

When unpacking the quote I read:

1) Jeff Bezos saw his warehouse workforce as necessary but replaceable

2) He feared that workers who remained at the company too long would turn complacent or, worse, disgruntled

The two statements seem relatively disconnected (which makes the "and" a little confusing). Anyway, while I understand a) (not saying I agree) and am a little confused by b), how both or either would logically lead to your conclusion is not obvious to me. Can you elaborate?

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

#372

Post by jppittma »

blagie wrote: post #182
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 competi…

Seems to be what Larry and Sergey called penny wise and pound foolish. A few points in favor of the "lazy cafe."

1. Free food costs the company less to provide in bulk than it does for individual employees to acquire on the open market. The benefit to the employee is higher than the cost to the employer. The employee values this perk in their comp package against what it would cost him to acquire it if it weren't provided.

2. The marginal value of an employee's time is nonlinear and asymmetric. My weekly hours 0-40 are less valuable to me than hours 120-160, and the inverse is true for the company - my weekly hours 0-40 are more valuable to them than hours 120-160. The lazy cafe is again getting more value for its money than the sweat shop.

3. Hiring two people to work 40 hours/week instead of 1 person to work 80 reduces the labor supply for your competitors.

4. Hiring people so you can extract as much value as possible for them gets your a bad reputation and a company full for rubes.

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

#374

Post by monklu »

JaimeThompson wrote: post #254
pardesi wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a recent Bloomberg article: Wealth of bottom 50% doubled between 2020-2022. Top 1% rose significantly. While the remaining 49% didnt budge much. Interpret it for your supply chain concerns.

How much of that wealth increase for the bottom 50% was driven by exploding property / home value increases ?

> the remaining 49% didnt budge much

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

#375

Post by blagie »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #298
blagie wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 competi…

> If Amazon paid the same wage as a lazy cafe by the beach, guess where workers would prefer to go? You can really close to really identifying the issue but there’s more to build off of this point. Amazon does offer a (somewhat) comparable wage to “a lazy cafe job at the beach” but the catch is that Amazon has a warehouse or two in every major metro area, and each of those requires thousands of full-time employees wh…

I don't think that's fair. I just went to a random pizza joint. There were two teenagers hanging around behind shooting the breeze. They were polite, fast, and professional when a customer would draft in, but for the most part, it looked like a pretty chill job. I can almost guarantee they were making minimum wage. There are plenty of jobs like that everywhere. There aren't many jobs like that much above minimum wage, or anywhere close to Amazon's wage.

If I were a teenager, I'd take that job over Amazon's nightmarish warehouses.

That calculus changes with rent and family. 30k per year is probably the minimum needed to raise a family for a homeowner in a lower cost-of-living part of the country, which translates to around $15/hour. Someone with rent / mortgage needs a bit more.

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

#376

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

abfan1127 wrote: post #209
esaym wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

would you prefer they not tell those people about the available benefits?

I would prefer that nobody who works 40 hours a week (tops! I'd be happy if the number was less) earns less than the US poverty level for a family with 1 or 2 children (undecided over which). As a matter of law.

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

#377

Post by ASinclair »

etempleton wrote: post #149

When the news broke that Amazon was doubling the salary of corporate employees I mentioned on here how it felt wrong in comparison to what they pay their warehouse workers and drivers and got some backlash on here. A lot of talk about how an engineer provides XXX% more value and supply and demand. Warehouse jobs are back breaking. I don't think they need to be paid as much as a software engineer, but they should be p…

> When the news broke that Amazon was doubling the salary of corporate employees

I'm pretty sure they just doubled the salary cap. That doesn't necessarily mean everyone's salary was doubled.

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

#379

Post by chickenpotpie »

mikem170 wrote: post #216
alangibson wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

1) prices were already universally high in Switzerland

2) swiss government regulates the price of healthcare

3) Switzerland uses significantly less fossil fuels and aren't as effected by the war in Ukraine

4) Switzerland passed multiple laws over the past few years to reduce the cost of goods, including banning foreign companies from charging Swiss citizens more

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

#380

Post by sam0x17 »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #363
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…

People need to read some history. The early 20th century industrialists talked about all the same stuff. People are fickle and managing them at scale is hard. There's more to it than just "give them a good deal". There are plenty of people who are getting a "good deal" who become complacent or disgruntled.

Early 20th centruy industrialists also had to deal with the looming threat of anti-trust regulations. These days it's almost a joke. There is no trust-busting anymore. The monopolies control foreign and domestic policy through massive lobbying efforts.
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