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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

#441

Post by deanCommie »

VerminOctopus1 wrote: post #69
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 can’t be the only one who had this experience. I recently had the choice between pursuing a cool startup position and an AWS position. Once I was emailed all of the AWS interview material and the 4 hour itinerary… I just had to ask myself if it was even worth putting my time into it. The total comp would probably be better than the startup position, but everything else (work life balance, risk of being fired, oppor…

"4 hour itinerary" is hardly excessive for a big tech role, what are you on about?

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

#442

Post by jeromegv »

99_00 wrote: post #414
rurp wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>pretty strong evidence that the jobs look a lot worse once you're in one of them Pretty strong evidence that the job is worse than people would expect would be an anonymous survey of workers by a third party. Churn can result from any number of factors. It simply isn't enough to support your conclusion, and a lack of imagination in seeing alternative explanations isn't proof. Warehouse jobs have high churn. Yes, Ama…

The fact that people are leaving with their foot is a strong evidence in itself that the job is not good. Does Ford lose all their workers right now? No. But they are unionized and make more money. Of course different industry but since Amazon chose to be in the industry of razor-thin margin, they have to find a solution to their own problem. If their business model relies on super cheap labor, then they must adapt.

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

#443

Post by walleeee »

Xeronate wrote: post #420
sam0x17 wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your argument has no relevance to the comment you are responding to as the point being made was it is human nature for (some) people to get complacent regardless of the circumstances.

contextualizing a point is just as legitimate as responding to it directly and this particular comment is relevant

perhaps some people will always grow complacent but you could just as easily make an essentialist argument about the corporation: maybe some employers will always abuse their employees, certainly some deliberately make it difficult to distinguish worker complacency from legitimate complaint, which bears directly on the original claim about human nature

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

#444

Post by jklinger410 »

fugalfervor wrote: post #271
alangibson wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 both. There's evidence supporting the idea that COVID relief contributed to inflation, if you'd like I can link the fivethirtyeight article exploring this. However, I should note that if it were up to me, I would accept inflation to save lives every single time. Without that relief, people would have died, starved, or gone into life-ruining debt. Inflation is unfortunate, but better than the alternative.

> There's evidence supporting the idea that COVID relief contributed to inflation

The way inflation is being used here is not what it has traditionally meant. Inflation, ie, too much total liquid cash, accompanied by super high prices for labor (and therefore goods) started secretly and dramatically a very long time ago. It's debated if it's the 60s, or some people say as far back as pre or post great depression. That runaway inflation is an old story and has become the norm.

The current definition of inflation is "whether the working class has enough money to feel secure." Which is something the market hates with a passion. The market wants all the money in the hands of the rich, so it can be in the market. The market wants cheap labor and an immobile workforce.

The market ALREADY thought that the workforce had too much money BEFORE COVID. So they were absolutely appalled at the idea of a stimulus. So what you are seeing described as inflation is really that. Cost of goods are up because of price gauging barrels of oil, which is intentional.

The measures taken to "reduce inflation" are actually to get money out of the workforce and back into the market.

If you want to look at inflation, look at how much money is being held by the 1%.

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

#445

Post by VerminOctopus1 »

deanCommie wrote: post #441
VerminOctopus1 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t be the only one who had this experience. I recently had the choice between pursuing a cool startup position and an AWS position. Once I was emailed all of the AWS interview material and the 4 hour itinerary… I just had to ask myself if it was even worth putting my time into it. The total comp would probably be better than the startup position, but everything else (work life balance, risk of being fired, oppor…

"4 hour itinerary" is hardly excessive for a big tech role, what are you on about?

The point is that the role wasn’t tantalizing enough to justify taking off a day from my existing job and going through Amazon’s interview gauntlet. The other job I was interviewing for had a much more reasonable interview structure, no whiteboard bullshit, no live coding, no 4 hour sessions. I think it says a lot about the company and how they value prospective employees’ time.

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

#447

Post by scarface74 »

sudosysgen wrote: post #429
scarface74 wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well not quite. They exist because they are profitable on average.

You think that most companies that are YC funded and seeking additional rounds of funding are profitable?

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

#448

Post by woah »

knolan wrote: post #422
hintymad wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That almost sounds like a cult.

You need to buy 10,000 hours of self improvement tapes to get to L7. Only the most enlightened have achieved it

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

#449

Post by amzn-throw »

lisper wrote: post #119

I would not work for Amazon unless my life depended on it (and even then I would have to think twice) but I have to say (reluctantly) that as a customer, both retail and AWS, I absolutely love them. The power that Amazon is acquiring scares the hell out of me, but at the same time, when I need to buy some random thing, no one else even comes close in terms of convenience and reliability. Sometimes I will make an effo…

For the record, being on the other side, and working hard to CREATE these experiences that customers love is absolutely addictive and intoxicating.

You have to actually give a shit about it though. Which most of us do. It requires effort and grit to have this level of "customer obsession", and to be fair, I would say we are mostly well compensated for it.

But it's not for everyone. Plenty of SDEs, including in this market just want to punch in and punch out, and not meaningfully move the bar forward. That's probably OK.

It's not good enough for me. My work is 1/3 of my life, 1/2 of my waking life. That better be fucking meaningful and significant.

You'd be surprised, you might enjoy working here too.

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

#450

Post by ActorNightly »

madrox wrote: post #282
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 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.

In what world is a $150k out of college starting salary low?
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