Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#711

Post by hot_gril » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 1:35 AM UTC

Johnny555 wrote: post #239

bilalq wrote: post #190

This is pretty sad to read. Before Covid, the Amazon Go store experience was phenomenal. All the convenience of a 7-Eleven but with the pricing of a normal grocery store. The food options were really good and the BlueApron style meal-kits were amazing. The Alexa integration was also nice for being able to just verbally ask what's the next step on a recipe while you're busy stirring or chopping things. When it rolled…

Lots of services would be phenomenal when you can offload much of the cost to run them to cheap offshore labor. Remember how great Uber and Doordash were when much of the cost of operating was offset by underpaid workers and VC funds? Now that they don't have unlimited piles of money and cities/states are making them pay more fair wages, the cost-benefit of those services has diminished. I was ok paying $5 for $20 of…

Lots of services are great when the parent company is taking a loss on them. Idk if that was the case here, but with Alexa it is, and so was Uber.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#712

Post by imperfect_light » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 1:50 AM UTC

omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #285

sunshowers wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 700 out of 1,000 Just Walk Out sales required human reviewers as of 2022 That's manual by any reasonable description.

I think it depends on how much each human reviewer did. If they manually reviewed most of the items on each shopping trip, then it's mostly manual. If they only manually reviewed an item or few per trip, I'd consider it to be mostly automated.

So if it's mostly automated then why are they abandoning it after investing so much time and energy?

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#713

Post by imperfect_light » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 1:55 AM UTC

rwbt wrote: post #243

bilalq wrote: post #190

This is pretty sad to read. Before Covid, the Amazon Go store experience was phenomenal. All the convenience of a 7-Eleven but with the pricing of a normal grocery store. The food options were really good and the BlueApron style meal-kits were amazing. The Alexa integration was also nice for being able to just verbally ask what's the next step on a recipe while you're busy stirring or chopping things. When it rolled…

I'm glad it's gone for good, if the process really works like how it's described in the article. Thousands of poor souls doing terrible pointless menial work just so that a few entitled customers can avoid the clunky self checkout (eww- the horror!). The entitlement of the west has no bounds really.

My first thought is that this was an attempt at satire, but now I realize it's a privileged Western person who has never traveled to a poor country and thinks that if these workers weren't labeling data they'd be self-actualized DJs or crypto investors.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#714

Post by ryukoposting » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 4:48 AM UTC

jfoster wrote: post #474

ryukoposting wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my point of view, Uber and DD were always going to head in that direction because by any objective measure, they are worse than the solution that already existed. The introduction of a middleman created new costs for drivers, customers, and restaurants alike, yet it's actually worse at delivering food than the conventional "drivers work for the restaurant" model. Sure, you get one website where you can see all t…

It's true that delivery services add a middle-man, but you don't seem to be considering that they add a lot of value in some important ways: 1. The single website/app is not just useful for discovery, but also to provide a consistent ordering experience. An individual restaurant might take orders over the phone, via their website, or via their own app. Those options will vary from one restaurant to the next. Not grea…

> also to provide a consistent ordering experience

Vendored web POS is widely available, and was emerging before UberEats and DD ever did. See: Toast

> A delivery service that aggregates demand & supply is very useful for restaurants & drivers.

This is only true in theory. You aren't giving enough credit to the logistical skills of small business owners, they are really good at allocating and dispatching drivers. If you're small enough to have no deliveries for several hours, then don't schedule any drivers during that time. If a delivery comes in, tell your cashier the address and have them run the delivery. Besides being quite efficient, there's an added bonus that you're cross-training your staff. That's how we always did it, at least.

It's anecdotal evidence, sure, but every delivery driver I have asked (half a dozen from several different cities and states) has said that their job is harder and pays worse today than 10 years ago.

"Well, just be more lean!" What a concept, I'm sure they haven't thought of that. It's much easier said than done. Logistics software is extremely complicated at scale- there's a reason governments subsidize delivery logistics through services like USPS, Royal Mail, etc. However, at the one-business microcosm, it's a simple enough problem that a seasoned owner/manager can organize an optimal dispatch in their head, on the fly.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#715

Post by phreeza » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 4:51 AM UTC

mrangle wrote: post #695

phreeza wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A free market without political intervention is at least as much of a myth. If employees don't engage in politics with concepts like "fair wage" and "underpaid", employers certainly will with concepts such as "bottom quantile wages drive inflation". The Nash equilibrium is for both sides to engage in the market but also in the political context the market is embedded in. So complaining about workers demanding higher…

I noted that there were two sides. Explaining it doesn't advance the conversation. "...in the political context the market is embedded in" is nonsense, especially when appealing to the "market sorting it out" in the next breath. Which argument are you recruting? Political intervention or the free market? Both? That's nice hand waving, no offense. Seemingly to make it as if your position is so elevated that it satisfi…

Re-reading your comment I think we actually have the same understanding of the dynamic, I think I misread "immortal" as "immoral" before which gave the comment a quite different vibe.

> "...in the political context the market is embedded in" is nonsense, especially when appealing to the "market sorting it out" in the next breath.

I meant:

complaining about (workers demanding higher wages instead of letting the market sort it out) is pointless

Not:

(complaining about workers demanding higher wages) instead of (letting the market sort it out) is pointless.

Agreed my wording could have been more precise there.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#716

Post by beefnugs » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 4:58 AM UTC

chrash wrote: post #310

this might be my first comment here heh. i've worked on a similar product before. there's no way they were turning a profit. they definitely missed stuff all the time even with a ton of sensors. and sensors aren't the only cost. annotation is by far the most costly operational expense. new product? needs several annotated photos and recalibrated weight sensors. merchant decides to put Christmas branding on the same U…

I think this failing, and tesla failing to actually ship "self driving" is clear : machine learning definitely has complexity limits, that we are a long way off from perfecting or even getting beyond some reasonable threshold.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#717

Post by nojster » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 5:04 AM UTC

gruez wrote: post #512

nojster wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the two examples you chose, I‘d say there is not much of a skill gap. If you‘d have chosen a burger flipper and an aeronautical engineer or a surgeon, I‘d have agreed with you.

> With the two examples you chose, I‘d say there is not much of a skill gap. Unless we're talking about really high end burgers, you can take almost anyone off the street and train them to flip burger patties within a day. They might not willingly do it on account of it being boring/tiring/poorly paid work, but it's not exactly hard to learn either. I doubt you can do the same for an accountant, unless your idea of a…

On a relative scale, I agree with you that the amount of training involved differs for accountants and burger flippers, thus this is a good example.

On an absolute scale, comparing skills of burger flippers, accountants, aeronautical engineers and surgeons, the first two basically lump together.

I look at skill gap more in terms of „how hard is it to completely automate/autonomize this job“. Which is fiercely easy both for the burger flipper and the accountant, yet a bit harder (though not impossible) for the other two.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#718

Post by WalterBright » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 6:46 AM UTC

account-5 wrote: post #534

WalterBright wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is nearly all jobs. All unskilled labor jobs. You're not going to learn welding in 30 days. Nor are you going to learn how to design a bridge. Or program in C++. Or diagnose a patient. Or be a lawyer. Or drive a race car. Etc.

I didn't say all jobs, did I? You successfully listed (some) jobs that might take longer than 30 days to learn. The thing about "unskilled" jobs, everyone seems to look down their noses at, is that they facilite the people doing the lofty jobs of: lawyer, doctor, c++ programmer, etc. Without them getting done for you you couldn't do what you're doing. Can the brickie work without their "unskilled" laborer? Sure, but…

I agree they are necessary, otherwise they wouldn't be employed. It's just that they are not skilled labor.

There is nothing wrong with honest work - skilled or unskilled.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#719

Post by WalterBright » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 6:49 AM UTC

cammikebrown wrote: post #528

WalterBright wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The local Starbucks over the years has had many turnovers in the staff. It usually takes about 3 days for a new worker to learn the job. That makes it unskilled labor. Skilled labor is something like welding, where it can take a year to get good at it. Or things that require calculus, which take 4 years of specialized training to even get an entry job at it. Or flying an airplane - you can't just flip through the ins…

How could you possibly know that it takes “3 days” to get good at being a barista? You should try it out sometime, with a 50 person line. I’m sure it’ll be a cake walk and your labor will be fairly compensated. I’ll even give you a 3 day head start just to be fair!

> How could you possibly know that it takes “3 days” to get good at being a barista?

Because I have gone to the same Starbucks every day for many years, and see many new hires as the staff turns over. It takes about 3 days to go from "cannot operate the cash register" to "efficiently fulfills customer orders".

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#720

Post by WalterBright » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 6:53 AM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #708

bombcar wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can onboard welding in less than 30 days too. You can be doing useful work as part of a welding group in 30 days, but you will not be a master. Grinder and paint make me the welder I ain't and all that.

I know. But you won't be a master barista right away either.

Starbucks coffee tastes the same whether it's the barista there for year or the 3-day newbie.