Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

vox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

621–630 of 764 posts

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

#621

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

scarface74 wrote: post #616
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's just say that I don't subscribe to the conservative traditional view of economics and politics that you're using to point out how absurd this sounds. Yes, I believe we should be paying much, much more for most of the things in our lives. Right now, those of us who make about 80% of median income and above are essentially riding on the backs who make less. I think this is immoral, although I recognize that chang…

I am not justifying anything. I am putting numbers behind your belief that “everyone who works for 40 hours a week should be able to support a family of four”. It’s easy to talk about ideals until the cold reality of numbers, inflation, etc are brought up. How do you propose we restructure our economy so that everyone get a wage that supports a family of four? How many people do you think will “lose out” if inflation…

> How do you propose we restructure our economy so that everyone get a wage that supports a family of four?

At its crudest, the US GDP is $23T. Divided among 350M people that's about $66k, for every living American. The working age population is about 215M, so that would be about $107k per working age American (not per household, per working age individual).

There's no need for money creation, we just need to spread the wealth around more evenly.

And note, I'm not actually advocating precisely equal income for everyone, or even every working age person. I suspect that some range of incomes is probably a good thing for society overall, but I'm fairly sure that it doesn't need to be anything like it is today. The point is that redistribution is how we get there, not injecting money into the economy.

You might care to listen to someone who knows a lot more about this stuff than me. Thomas Piketty was on the Ezra Klein Show a couple of weeks ago, and talked about several "radical" schemes to alter the levels of inequality in western societies.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...

(there's a transcript there too, so you can read rather than listen if that's your preference).

I give away 5% of my income. That's not enough to bring it down to median levels. My work is relatively charitable in some sense though: I develop libre audio software, and convince people to pay me for it anyway.

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

#622

Post by pram »

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.

No kidding, my first EPR out of tech school had a bunch of 4s and when it came time to test for SSgt my combined points were so far off I just gave up and coasted until I got out. For the best though.

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

#623

Post by cpeterso »

madrox wrote: post #338
uncomputation wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Combine that with aggressive pruning/PIPing and you have people fighting to stay long enough to get their shares vested, once you stop getting promoted there is little stability because you will either get torn down for someone else’s ladder climb or have to keep getting promoted by any means necessary.

In my experience there, PIPing wasn't any more aggressive than anywhere else I've worked. The fighting was certainly real, though.

Leaked memos show Amazon’s senior leadership asks managers to “manage out” (PIP or let go) the bottom 6% of their workforce each year:

https://bigtechnology.substack.com/p/standing-up-for-us-pleb...

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

#624

Post by quickthrower2 »

rexreed wrote: post #258
pram wrote: post #17

“We would love you back in 90 days,” Pagan says the HR staff member told him. In the meantime, Pagan should “do some GrubHub or Uber,” the HR employee said. lol this is just monstrous.

Let's quote more of this for context: Pagan began working at the Amazon delivery hub in October and, within two months, had been promoted to a role on the safety committee for the facility. The new role didn’t come with a pay raise, and is on top of a worker’s core tasks, but Pagan saw it as a stepping stone to an official promotion. But in April, Pagan told Recode, he took two days off to have an infected tooth look…

This wouldn’t be out of place as the first chapter in an 80s dystopian sci fi novel.

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

#625

Post by quickthrower2 »

peanuty1 wrote: post #480
thenoblesunfish wrote: post #396

“Running out of people to hire” is a strange way of saying “Not offering employees enough to want to work there”. To be catty, there are plenty of people to hire, but maybe they’re running out of people to exploit.

It's not sustainable for them to offer, say, $30 an hour starting salary for fulfillment centre employees. As it is, they have to subsidize retail with other revenue lines like AWS and advertising.

That implies their business is not viable.

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

#626

Post by wayeq »

whimsicalism wrote: post #599
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…

Yes, Amazon actually pays employees $5000 if they quit and agree to never return. Available to any employee who has worked there for long enough (I believe a year?)

I can't wrap my brain around this.

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

#627

Post by scarface74 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #621
scarface74 wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not justifying anything. I am putting numbers behind your belief that “everyone who works for 40 hours a week should be able to support a family of four”. It’s easy to talk about ideals until the cold reality of numbers, inflation, etc are brought up. How do you propose we restructure our economy so that everyone get a wage that supports a family of four? How many people do you think will “lose out” if inflation…

> How do you propose we restructure our economy so that everyone get a wage that supports a family of four? At its crudest, the US GDP is $23T. Divided among 350M people that's about $66k, for every living American. The working age population is about 215M, so that would be about $107k per working age American (not per household, per working age individual). There's no need for money creation, we just need to spread…

So you’re not even willing to give up more than 5% of your income and redistribute if yet you think everyone else should and you justify it by the fact that you work on open source audio software? I’m sure people struggling really appreciate that

So let’s say we redistribute the entire economy to each working age person (even though you are personally not willing to), how do we fund health care, infrastructure, education, people who need more than that from the government, etc? Who is going to invest in business? Do you suggest we tax everyone so that they have equal income? Should the fry cook make as much as the brain surgeon? Who is going to pay for the education needed for the more skilled jobs and what motivation does the doctor have to put in 8 additional years of school if they could make just as much money as the fry cook?

My children are grown, should my wife and I get the same income that someone with two special needs children get?

My parents are retired and doing pretty well for themselves with two pensions and two social security checks. Should we also tax them enough to make things more equal and tell them that they don’t deserve to keep their income after working 30 years?

That $66K might be enough for someone living in the MiddleOfNowhere Nebraska. But it won’t be enough for someone living in Seattle. Do we also redistribute people across the United States to make the cost of living equal?

What’s to stop me from just moving overseas where I can take my talents and make more money and then you have a brain drain?

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

#628

Post by dh2022 »

kennywinker wrote: post #172
sib wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No idea where you are getting your numbers, but Amazon did not post $200B in profit in 2021. The list of top five annual profit (adjusted to current USD) by any company ever is: 1. Saudi Aramco (2018) - $120B 2. Saudi Aramco (2021) - $115B 3. Vodafone (2014) - $113B 4. Fannie Mae (2013) - $98B 5. Apple (2021) - $95B Perhaps you are thinking about revenue?

> Amazon annual gross profit for 2021 was $197.478B, a 29.28% increase from 2020. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/gross-... Gross profits.

Hello Kenny - some clarification seems to be needed re: some financial metrics. 1. Gross profit = revenue - COGS 2. COGS = price paid to manufacturer + transportation costs from manufacturer to the warehouse and from warehouse to customer

COGS does not include warehouse rent and utilities - these are operating expenses.

Hopefully this makes it clear that my reply to your other comment was in good faith and not a straw man. The metric you proposed is not a good metric. Amazon cannot function if Gross profit is 0 --- because it would not be able to pay for the rest of the stuff it needs to function: executives, software developers, warehouses. Saying all the expenses not included in COGS are discretionary is just not true - some of theses expenses are essential.

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

#629

Post by stale2002 »

vishnugupta wrote: post #469
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.

> stock You left out a big part here; RSU vesting schedule is back loaded. It's something like 5-20-25-50

To say that it is backloaded is misleading.

Yes, technically speaking, the stock only compensation is backloaded. But that is balanced out by a 2 year "signing bonus" that is front loaded an equivalent amount of money, such that you are almost getting a hybrid stock/signing bonus package, so that it is technically the same amount of compensation each year.

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

#630

Post by spamizbad »

jjoonathan wrote: post #386
torginus wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let alone which ones are the good ones. That only comes from experience. AWS never cancels anything... but they never complete anything either and they abandon 80% of their products in minimum viable state, where "viable" is defined by the PM's bonus packet, not by anyone who has to use the damn thing.

Not true - they are finally turning off "EC2 classic" in August.
Post reply on HN