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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

#511

Post by kennywinker »

dh2022 wrote: post #492
kennywinker wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes, I agree, your straw-man is plainly false. Amazon does need executives, software developers, and warehouses.

Amazon is a functioning + profitable business. If it can't continue to be a functioning + profitable business if it pays every employee a good wage, it doesn't deserve to exist anymore - it needs to die to make room for a business that CAN do that. But I don't actually think that amazon has to exploit its workers in order to stay profitable, and I think the numbers (at very least the 33B in net profits) back me up.

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

#512

Post by stevenwoo »

blagie wrote: post #375
ComputerGuru wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Homeowner seems optimistic - how or when are they saving for the downpayment?

30K per year is about poverty level in most of the United States for a family of four. https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/demo/p60-27...

But if both parents work at 15/hour, they could rent, though childcare would take a big bite out of their budget even at 60K per year.

Most places with lower cost of living in the USA have jobs closer to federal minimum wage work rather than 15/hour as well.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/16/how-much-money-a-family-of-4...

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

#513

Post by surement »

babypuncher wrote: post #428
surement wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how being unemployed is better than making a low wage in terms of being hungry or homeless. Are you just trying to advocate for communism?

I'm not saying that being unemployed is better than making an unlivable wage. I am saying both outcomes are unacceptable. And I am not advocating for any specific solution, just saying that the current system does not work. I don't believe in false dichotomies. Being unhappy with capitalism does not automatically make one a communist.

> both outcomes are unacceptable

What is the alternative? You can't pay someone more than they earn in revenue and minimum wage laws create an artificial price floor that causes everyone who would otherwise earn between above zero and the minimum to instead make zero.

The idea of a "living wage" is an worthless notion that assumes that the distribution of income by age and experience is not the one from the real world. In the real world, the more experience you have, the more money you make. The majority of low earners are simply young or at an early point in their careers. To rob them of entry level jobs by setting artificial price floors is what's unethical. Let them get low wage jobs while they still live at home or have roommates or don't live downtown SF instead of dictating that the world should be one of magical bounty and abundance where everyone can somehow work for "high" wages without price inflation for everything else making them effectively poor.

Being unhappy with capitalism is being in denial about the world having scarce resources.

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

#514

Post by WalterBright »

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.

It's also human nature to grumble about one's job. Heck, I do it too, even though I work for free.

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

#515

Post by dragonwriter »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #463
scarface74 wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Unprincipled” business owners, farmers, and basically every other company that wants cheap labor in “rural America”.

Maybe, but that doesn't support the generalization that this is a broadly-held right-wing position, which is what we were debating. Note also that plenty of ostensibly left-wing companies want cheap labor as well.

> Note also that plenty of ostensibly left-wing companies want cheap labor as well.

There are (outside of small local cooperative enterprises) approximately zero left-wing companies in the US.

The things painted as “left-wing” companies by the far right are center-right neoliberal corporate capitalist enterprises that do some mix of opposing far-right culture war efforts as a drag on corporate capitalist exploitation and making PR gestures to the left side of culture war fights while remaining locked in the economic center-right.

Yeah, in the GOP’s current view of the world, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is considered radical leftists, but, that's not reflective of reality.

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

#516

Post by taocoyote »

WalterBright wrote: post #508
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…

The US military is the same way. Officers get promoted, or they retire. I.e. "up or out". In the AF, your performance reviews need to be "firewalled" or it's time to leave.

Firewall fives, I forgot about that, or maybe blocked it from my memory. It’s the same for enlisted.

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

#517

Post by cebert »

ActorNightly wrote: post #450
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.

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

That sounds low to me

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

#518

Post by int_19h »

burntoutfire wrote: post #458
knolan wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That almost sounds like a cult.

A cult takes money from you and doesn't pay you a million a year or whatever these people are making.

How much are they making for Amazon, though?

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

#519

Post by sam0x17 »

burntoutfire wrote: post #460
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.

On the other hand, they could just beat up or kill their disgruntled employees... I think things have improved and not regressed since then.

https://theintercept.com/2021/03/25/amazon-drivers-pee-bottl...

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

#520

Post by kennywinker »

gruez wrote: post #355
kennywinker wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supply and demand also applies to the labour market. If you pay more, the best people want to work for you and you can hire the best people. Humans are not fungible, no matter how much businesses try to treat them that way.

>Supply and demand also applies to the labour market Right, but for wages (ie. prices) to go up, you need to decrease supply or increase demand. Increasing the prices you pay doesn't do that.

Supply and demand can "solve" for the price for an HD TV. It can't solve the problem of "do I need an HD TV or a 4K TV?".
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