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

#431

Post by ironmagma » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 7:55 PM UTC

eloff wrote: post #398

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?

Amazon has never struck me as a company that would prioritize doing the right thing.

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

#432

Post by ghaff » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 7:57 PM UTC

cbsmith wrote: post #210

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…

If you're earning less than $130,000 a year, you are eligible for an FSA, which the HR team will discuss during almost any company's new-hire orientation... There are lots of government benefits that are restricted to people below a certain income. That doesn't mean that it is unconscionable to pay people at that income level or to educate employees on what they are eligible for so that they can take advantage of it.

>If you're earning less than $130,000 a year, you are eligible for an FSA

Assuming you mean a flexible spending account (for healthcare out of pocket), you're certainly not capped at $130K/year in the US. Your broader point is of course true.

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

#433

Post by FFRefresh » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 7:58 PM UTC

simonw wrote: post #419

FFRefresh wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yours is a broad epistemic question. How can you be sure of anything? How can you be sure what the Amazon exec stated in a Reuters article last year is accurate? We're dealing with uncertainty in all regards. My position is that it's best to be transparent with our uncertainty. If the article had said "We didn't have good wage data to directly compare Walmart & Amazon warehouse compensation against each other", I wou…

"How can you be sure what the Amazon exec stated in a Reuters article last year is accurate?" You can't. That's why the article says "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" - rather than stating as fact that "in 2021 the company bumped the average starting wage...".

My comment was rhetorical in response to your prior comment on saying you can't use certain data points because of uncertainty. It was about that principle. The citation of the source of data here is okay, I'm not suggesting they were wrong to indicate where the quote/data point came from.

The greater point is about source/data selection. MAX(Walmart) > MIN(Amazon) is a weird comparison to make. And choosing to quote two completely different sources for both the MAX(Walmart) data point [resolves to $25] and the MIN(Amazon) data point [resolves to $18] is strange, and I feel should have been explained if they're going to use quotes to communicate what might be happening in objective reality.

How was Sheheryar Kaoosji, of the Warehouse Worker Resource Center, able to communicate what the max wage for a Walmart worker was, but unable to provide any comparable data point for Amazon (or it was provided, and an editor/journalist excluded it)?

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

#434

Post by frakkingcylons » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 7:59 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…

The point still stands: other employers are offering competitive wages for similar roles and are forcing Amazon to react. Otherwise Amazon wouldn’t be struggling to hire warehouse workers.

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

#435

Post by Dracophoenix » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 8:00 PM UTC

suture wrote: post #231

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.

The natural minimum wage that the market determines (absent all regulations) is $0 per hour and is called slavery. Enlightened people have moved passed the idea that the “market” alone should determine the minimum wage.

Does that mean open source work should count as slavery? You're right that the natural minimum wage is zero, but there's more to slavery than simply being paid nothing. I would think the enlightened you speak of would also know the difference between volition and compulsion.

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

#436

Post by deanCommie » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 8:00 PM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #412

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.

As a result, AWS engineers are very much promotion oriented. This leads to two results: title inflation and disgruntled employees. L6 used to be a big deal but not any more. L7 is now the new L6. The challenge with this arrangement is that whoever got promoted early on but stayed in the same level get less in return. And apparently it's human's nature to compare. When engineers see that their peers get promoted to L7…

Promotion-orientation is bad, but so are promotion levels that are considered "almost impossible to reach".

Levels.fyi doesn't seem to agree with your title inflation evaluation: https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Amazon,Microsoft&trac...

It's only 3 data points, but it seems that Amazon Senior is comparable to Google senior, and it's Microsoft that inflates the Senior title.

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

#437

Post by tomnipotent » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 8:00 PM UTC

FFRefresh wrote: post #411

simonw wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're working as a professional journalist, a "simple google search" isn't enough: how can you be sure that the information you are seeing on those kinds of wage comparison websites is accurate, and comes from people who genuinely worked at those companies?

Yours is a broad epistemic question. How can you be sure of anything? How can you be sure what the Amazon exec stated in a Reuters article last year is accurate? We're dealing with uncertainty in all regards. My position is that it's best to be transparent with our uncertainty. If the article had said "We didn't have good wage data to directly compare Walmart & Amazon warehouse compensation against each other", I wou…

> it's best to be transparent with our uncertainty

Why is it best? I'm not interested in reading a bunch of gibberish disclaimer that I already know, and that all readers should know when consuming media. People can be wrong, facts are not black and white, and truth is a spectrum. It's not the job of a journalist on a deadline to spoon feed you critical thinking.

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

#438

Post by jklinger410 » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 8:02 PM UTC

alangibson wrote: post #110

mc32 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not the money supply. It's a supply side problem due to Corona shutdowns. All the Fed is about to do is induce a bunch of unemployment.

> It's a supply side problem due to Corona shutdowns

This is a lie being spread around. It's actually extracting stimulus back from the poor, making up for lost profit during COVID, and decreasing total employment.

The market holds more power in the price of oil than the fed does with interest rates. The fed and the market are teaming up to make up for any ground (in profits and operating cost) that was lost during COVID.

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

#439

Post by koofdoof » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 8:03 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…

I think you're correct that the statement isnt necessarily indicative of the writer having a specific bias. However misleading yet provocative comparisons like that are actively incentivized by the structure of journalism at the moment. Writing like that takes less effort and research yet it gets more views and shares. So perhaps its not malice or agenda pushing, but the writer also understands that being misleading is directly profitable. Why would they bother doing the work to make a more accurate or nuanced comparison if will hinder their own interests.

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

#440

Post by amzn-throw » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 8:04 PM UTC

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've been an engineer at Amazon for almost 10 years. Been promoted twice. Ask me anything.

Yes, we're having a lot of trouble recruiting engineers, because of discussion threads like this where a lot of misinformation is shared about what it's like to work here.

Is it tough? Yes. Is it competitive? Yes. Is there stack ranking? Yes.

Is it the most fulfilling and challenging and interesting job I've had in 22 years of Software Development? (The latter half of my career has been here). Yes, yes, and yes.

This is the best job I've ever had and I think it can be for a lot of others who want to have disproportionately large impact day-to-day and on-the-world.