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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

#391

Post by scarface74 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #376
abfan1127 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m sure my 16 year old son would have loved that.

And everyone arguing that a company doesn’t deserve to exist if it can’t profitably pay more, is posting on a site funding money losing companies that couldn’t exist if they actually had to make a profit.

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

#392

Post by rurp »

99_00 wrote: post #350
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.

I don't know, Amazon's absurdly high churn rate is pretty strong evidence that the jobs look a lot worse once you're in one of them. It's not about people being dumb and making bad decisions, it's just really hard to evaluate a work environment from the outside.

Even for tech jobs, where it's common to interview with many future coworkers, assessing the work environment is tough. Warehouse type jobs are probably even harder to evaluate.

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

#393

Post by latchkey »

torginus wrote: post #384
capableweb wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The number of services is just crazy - I've worked with AWS solutions architects in trying to find the perfect solution to our particular problems, and even they don't seem to know what half the stuff does.

Kind of goes both ways, they might not have been very good architects.

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

#394

Post by scarface74 »

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…

> 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,

Unless they are a tech company funded by VCs…

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

#395

Post by rschachte »

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…

I think you have little understanding of how warehouses work if you think it’s just people moving boxes.

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

#397

Post by scarface74 »

ASinclair wrote: post #377
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.

Amazon didn’t even do that. Before, no matter who you were, your cash component was maxed out between $160K - $175K. The rest of your compensation was in stock.

Now, more of your compensation can be stock based.

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

#398

Post by eloff »

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…

You'd think they'd scrap the commercials and put the budget into improving working conditions if they really cared. I doubt the cost of the ads, plus the cost of the bad publicity, plus the cost of employee churn is really worth it. Why not just do the right thing? Even if it made them sightly less profitable, so what?

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

#399

Post by Vladimof »

jrockway wrote: post #339
lisper wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think there is a small mom & pop one stop shop, but if you are willing to buy different things from different stores, you have options. I buy most of my electronics from B&H, and things like fasteners from McMaster-Carr. Amazon does feel pretty unavoidable for the long tail, though.

McMaster-Carr is amazing but Grainger is very nice too.

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

#400

Post by fugalfervor »

jimmaswell wrote: post #294
fugalfervor wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming an even distribution of COVID deaths throughout the 50 states, 20,000 workers per state have died in the last two years. I wonder if that has anything to do with the hiring difficulties fast-food restaurants are facing. The number of deaths is probably also higher among those who would be fast-food workers, since the likelihood of death from COVID was correlated with poverty.

How many 80 year olds were working in fast food in 2019?

This kind of response is why I asked the question, I guess. I don't know the answer!
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