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This. It's easy to shift the blame to faceless Amazon and pretend "the company" is at fault. It's not. The people who are running the company (and I'm not refe

by weland 11y ago

This. It's easy to shift the blame to faceless Amazon and pretend "the company" is at fault. It's not. The people who are running the company (and I'm not referring strictly to top management here) are the ones with the blatant disregard for their employees. This is not a result of some inherent forces our Universe suddenly concentrating over Amazon. They're the result of business decisions. A bunch of people wearing suits have talked about this and agreed it's okay.

ucaetano 11y ago
Tell me, if it was your money being invested, would you act differently?
- tormeh 11y ago
  Yeah, it seems like it's the natural dynamic. The government could probably do something about it, I guess.
  - ucaetano 11y ago
    Yep, and that should be minimum wage, not "good working conditions for highly-paid white collar workers". [Edit: sorry if the tone sounds bad, no intend to offend] Disclaimer: I'm a highly-paid white collar worker. There's enough competition in the tech industry that this isn't a problem, let the market regulate itself in this case, it's working. I wouldn't work at Amazon under those conditions, but if some people would, let them.
- weland 11y ago
  I like to think that I would. Primarily because I tend to seek to spend and invest money in a way that does not require me to make compromises in terms of humanity. Granted, I've never invested money in anything of Amazon's level, so I cannot know -- all I know is what I hope I'd do.
- aperrien 11y ago
  Yes, because I think about profit more than one or two quarters down the road.
  - ucaetano 11y ago
    Are you saying that Bezos doesn't? And if your management strategy is better than just hiring cheap, open a company and you'll win on the long term.
    - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
      That's a bit glib considering you also need to deal with funding, investor relations, market fit, and all kinds of other issues that have a lot more impact on longevity than developer salary. It also ignores the fact that markets are structured to reward cheap and greedy behaviour and C-suite narcissism, and to punish - or at least get in the way of - bottom-up worker democracy and other more fluid and less myth-of-the-holy-CEO management structures. As for Amazon - the company can clearly afford to treat its workers better. The actual effect on profitability is likely to be positive, not negative, because better people will stay for longer, less churn means more stability and less random technical debt for new hires, and better publicity makes it easier to keep customers than lose them. Bezos seems to think the tradeoffs are fine as they are. I think he's wrong about that. Amazon's model is quite brittle, and it's open to any number of competitive attacks. And Bezos has made some very poor decisions (phone, etc.) Amazon will be fine in the short to medium term, but I'll be surprised if its business model isn't seriously disrupted by competition within less than a decade. IMO treating workers better would make the company more creative and resilient, not less - and probably more profitable too.
- lordnacho 11y ago
  Yes, this is a classic example of a skew risk. Cheap out, don't hire anyone, and you'll probably save money. But your company is at risk of collapsing if you get an event you hadn't planned for. Reputation can vanish fast if you have an IT problem and customers can't get their stuff. And of course this will never, ever come up in your case studies as a recurring risk, because you're encouraged to read everything as a nice little story in business school. The one or two cases where it does happen will just be chalked up to some admonition about hiring better staff or some other BS.
  - ucaetano 11y ago
    "Cheap out, don't hire anyone, and you'll probably save money. But your company is at risk of collapsing if you get an event you hadn't planned for. Reputation can vanish fast if you have an IT problem and customers can't get their stuff." Are you implying that Bezos and Amazon's investors are just dumb and don't think about the long term implications of their hiring practices? You can always short Amazon's stock if you're that confident. Maybe they did think about it all, and reached the conclusion that this culture and hiring practices will have a better return on the long term. It is far too easy to say what other people should do with their money...

by weland 11y ago

ucaetano 11y ago

Tell me, if it was your money being invested, would you act differently?

tormeh 11y ago
Yeah, it seems like it's the natural dynamic. The government could probably do something about it, I guess.
- ucaetano 11y ago
  Yep, and that should be minimum wage, not "good working conditions for highly-paid white collar workers". [Edit: sorry if the tone sounds bad, no intend to offend] Disclaimer: I'm a highly-paid white collar worker. There's enough competition in the tech industry that this isn't a problem, let the market regulate itself in this case, it's working. I wouldn't work at Amazon under those conditions, but if some people would, let them.
weland 11y ago
I like to think that I would. Primarily because I tend to seek to spend and invest money in a way that does not require me to make compromises in terms of humanity. Granted, I've never invested money in anything of Amazon's level, so I cannot know -- all I know is what I hope I'd do.
aperrien 11y ago
Yes, because I think about profit more than one or two quarters down the road.
- ucaetano 11y ago
  Are you saying that Bezos doesn't? And if your management strategy is better than just hiring cheap, open a company and you'll win on the long term.
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    That's a bit glib considering you also need to deal with funding, investor relations, market fit, and all kinds of other issues that have a lot more impact on longevity than developer salary. It also ignores the fact that markets are structured to reward cheap and greedy behaviour and C-suite narcissism, and to punish - or at least get in the way of - bottom-up worker democracy and other more fluid and less myth-of-the-holy-CEO management structures. As for Amazon - the company can clearly afford to treat its workers better. The actual effect on profitability is likely to be positive, not negative, because better people will stay for longer, less churn means more stability and less random technical debt for new hires, and better publicity makes it easier to keep customers than lose them. Bezos seems to think the tradeoffs are fine as they are. I think he's wrong about that. Amazon's model is quite brittle, and it's open to any number of competitive attacks. And Bezos has made some very poor decisions (phone, etc.) Amazon will be fine in the short to medium term, but I'll be surprised if its business model isn't seriously disrupted by competition within less than a decade. IMO treating workers better would make the company more creative and resilient, not less - and probably more profitable too.
lordnacho 11y ago
Yes, this is a classic example of a skew risk. Cheap out, don't hire anyone, and you'll probably save money. But your company is at risk of collapsing if you get an event you hadn't planned for. Reputation can vanish fast if you have an IT problem and customers can't get their stuff. And of course this will never, ever come up in your case studies as a recurring risk, because you're encouraged to read everything as a nice little story in business school. The one or two cases where it does happen will just be chalked up to some admonition about hiring better staff or some other BS.
- ucaetano 11y ago
  "Cheap out, don't hire anyone, and you'll probably save money. But your company is at risk of collapsing if you get an event you hadn't planned for. Reputation can vanish fast if you have an IT problem and customers can't get their stuff." Are you implying that Bezos and Amazon's investors are just dumb and don't think about the long term implications of their hiring practices? You can always short Amazon's stock if you're that confident. Maybe they did think about it all, and reached the conclusion that this culture and hiring practices will have a better return on the long term. It is far too easy to say what other people should do with their money...