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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

#491

Post by lisper »

charles_f wrote: post #477
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…

Beyond the "up or out" mentality, the disgust you got from considering people as replaceable cogs in a machine and how it's done overall, and maybe not applicable to warehouse forces ; I think having some turnover in your organization is a good thing. You don't get the same diversity of idea and experience when people around you have all been there for 15 years than you get when they're coming and going. In my experi…

Yes, of course some turnover is necessary. You do sometimes have to get rid of the deadwood. But deciding that everyone is going to be treated as deadwood sooner or later (and apparently more likely sooner than later) as a matter of policy seems ill-advised to me.

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

#492

Post by dh2022 »

kennywinker wrote: post #208
lotsofpulp wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no reason to ignore fixed costs (aka using “gross profit”) for the purpose of calculating how much extra cash a company could be paying its employees. Net income (aka profit) is the extra cash flow that could have been spent.

> Net income (aka profit) is the extra cash flow that could have been spent. It's possible gross profit is the wrong metric, but the premise that net income is the right metric isn't something I accept. Net income is the money left over after it's been allocated out as the company has chosen. i.e. all the salaries have been paid, stock grants have been made, buildings and utilities are all paid, stock buybacks have b…

Net income is all the money left after all the expenses are paid. Stock buybacks have no impact on net income (they are part of the cash flow statement, not the income statement). Excluding all the things you said to get to the metric you like means Amazon can function without executives, software developers (no stock grant expenses), warehouses (no buildings and utilities expenses).... Which is plainly not true.

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

#493

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #385
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> People need to read some history. But they'll get distracted before getting around to it. Gore Vidal wasn't kidding when he used the words "United States of Amnesia" in his essays. (Also, "our owners". Good stuff, tangy with aristocratic vinegar - acerbic, I believe the tasters call it.)

or acetic ;)

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

#494

Post by lisper »

jrockway wrote: post #486
lisper wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised that these specialty retailers have not banded together to form some kind of syndicate with a common web front end to take orders. That sort of thing could be an Amazon-killer. Combined with a doordash-like delivery service it could offer same-day delivery and reliable product vetting. Hm, anyone here want to start a company?

Isn't that kind of what Shopify, Fast, and some other company that I only heard off because they laid off half their staff doing? I haven't researched the industry extensively, but I'm guessing that companies like to keep customer data to themselves and curate what they think is the ideal checkout experience. (Everyone should copy McMaster, though.) That's why you see companies happy to delegate the financing involve…

None of those companies are syndicates, i.e. none of them are owned by the retailers they represent. They're trying to just be middlemen. That won't work.

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

#495

Post by suture »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #435
suture wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I do not at all understand the reason for your response. Do you really think that I was saying that doing something for free is always a form of slavery? I think it’s obvious the meaning and intent of what I wrote and only a disingenuous interpretation could have led you to respond as you did.

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

#496

Post by dreamcompiler »

As many others have said, there's no shortage of labor in the US; there's a shortage of pay.

Like many others, Bezos built his business by exploiting a temporary condition: A virtually infinite supply of people willing to accept a horrible job for low pay. That condition no longer exists, but Bezos didn't realize it was unsustainable (it's unsustainable because if all workers are paid shit wages they can't afford to be customers). Or maybe he did realize it which is why he retired. In any case, now Amazon is panicking.

Good. When I think about this along with their other dick moves like pushing cheap Chinese counterfeit products, encouraging fake reviews, and stealing third-party product designs just because they can, I now check Amazon's competitors first when I buy something online.

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

#497

Post by lisper »

burntoutfire wrote: post #489
lisper wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think it's possible. It is manifestly possible. The Germans do it. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236165/german-workers-satis... The reason it doesn't happen in the U.S. is that workers have been systematically stripped of all of their power, so corporate management now answers exclusively to shareholders. Trying to make life better for your workers puts you at a competitive disadvantage. But it does not…

German economy is famous for being based on small and mid-sized companies (which are often the best in the world at the ultra-specialized thing that they do). My post was on impossiblity of high job satisfaction levels in big organizations, I don't think it's as bad for the mid-sized and small shops.

There are 29 German companies in the Fortune Global 500, each with tens or hundreds of thousands of employees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_German_compani...

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

#498

Post by surement »

Hasu wrote: post #307
surement wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, 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. One of the many fallacies here that hasn't already been pointed out is that it's impossible to determine the exact amount of revenue a single emp…

So what, an employer is gonna go on losing money and will never look into why? If they go out of business then the employee will also lose their job.

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

#499

Post by vishnugupta »

mywittyname wrote: post #389
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…

> Everyone and their mother knew that printing money since 2008 was going to blow up one day. You can't "predict" that something will cyclical will happen on some indeterminate timeline then claim success when it eventually does. Impactful actions have pretty immediate results. So if you "predicted" that the actions of 09-10 to have an effect, if effect didn't happen by like 2012, your prediction was wrong. The econo…

> You can't "predict" that something will cyclical will happen on some indeterminate timeline

It was in plain sight as early as one year ago. The fed itself had signalled exactly one year ago (coincidentally) that they are preparing to tighten money supply in 2023 [1]. Of course they didn't anticipate Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing supply shortage. But as far as cycles go it was clearly expected. Also, it was obvious if one had paid attention the fed rate history [2]. Interest rates were on the rise until COVID struck forcing both fed and treasury to increase money supply to prevent hardship to the people. Also, back in Nov 2021 fed had slowed down money infusion by reducing MBS purchase speed.

People don't realise the extent to which 2008 GFC continues to reverberate. 2010s were truly exceptional years where interest rates were kept artificially low and fed kept printing money through QE (e.g., MBS purchase [3]). It would be really absurd to expect fed to have kept creating money and as the last decade drew to an end something had to give just that COVID postponed the day of the reckoning. Make no mistake 2020s are going to be really harsh money supply wise; a generation of people are going to experience what tight money supply feels like.

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/6/16/federal-reserve-...

[2] https://imgur.com/a/np0FkyQ

[3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TMBACBW027SBOG

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

#500

Post by jacobolus »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #493
B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People need to read some history. But they'll get distracted before getting around to it. Gore Vidal wasn't kidding when he used the words "United States of Amnesia" in his essays. (Also, "our owners". Good stuff, tangy with aristocratic vinegar - acerbic, I believe the tasters call it.)

or acetic ;)

These two words (like acid, acrid, and vinegar) come from the same root.
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