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> Trying to sell it like no jobs are lost is quite naive at best, and purposefully misleading at worst. Well, the article does literally say "No people were la

> Trying to sell it like no jobs are lost is quite naive at best, and purposefully misleading at worst. Well, the article does literally say "No people were laid off when the robots were installed, and Amazon found new roles for the displaced workers, Mr. Clark said.". Either Mr. Clark is lying, or this point is moot.

sokoloff 9y ago
I'm not following. Suppose they "normally" ran 150 full time employees and 150 temp workers for holiday peak. Suppose they have a 25% attrition rate. (37 of those 150 employees quit voluntarily.) After the robots, they could have 115 employees working and still not laid anyone off. Yet, in terms of full time employment, they went from 150 to 115 and in terms of temp labor went from 150 to 0. Did the robots destroy jobs in such a case? I'd think "yes". (I still support the deployment of robots in such cases; I'm only responding to the logical argument here, not the philosophical implications thereof.)
- microcolonel 9y ago
  > Suppose they have a 25% attrition rate. (37 of those 125 workers quit voluntarily.) Why would they retain employees which they would not rehire (minus wages in place of hiring cost)? They have no obligation to retain these workers, so clearly Amazon's base (non-seasonal) demand for labour increases fast enough to justify retaining them. At the current rate you would expect them to hire more labour, not less. The human jobs described here are still so far beyond current robotic technology that it's likely there will be no easy gains in automation here. Meanwhile, as Amazon's efficiency increases, throughput will also increase, which means demand for labour will continue to increase even if there are marginal increases in automation.
  - vertex-four 9y ago
    > Why would they retain employees which they would not rehire (minus wages in place of hiring cost)? For good relations with the Government which has a goal of decreasing unemployment, and avoiding bad PR in popular media? If you can wait a couple of months to achieve exactly the same outcome with fewer risks, why not. > Meanwhile, as Amazon's efficiency increases, throughput will also increase No, throughput is a function of demand, not efficiency, unless Amazon is currently backlogged.
    - markvdb 9y ago
      > For good relations with the Government which has a goal of decreasing unemployment, and avoiding bad PR in popular media? If you can wait a couple of months to achieve exactly the same outcome with fewer risks, why not. This. Technically, centralisation has given amazon the scale to automate. Socially, that same scale of centralisation exposes them to more critical eyes. Their main vulnerability I guess...
- kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
  They also remove the need to make future hires, expanding the workforce to match growth. There is a lost "opportunity cost" of unrealized employment caused by massive automation. The reallocation of labor during the throes of the industrial revolution worked because the new technologies needed constant care and babysitting. Reliable machines that need infrequent service will not need much maintenance staff.
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    The reallocation of labour also worked because demand for consumer goods increased dramatically as mere living effectively became cheaper.
hectorlorenzo 9y ago
Maybe no people were laid off, and they are hiring like crazy. But they are growing like hyper-crazy. The question is: would they've hired more people if it wasn't for automation? Are they hiring at a proportional rate of their growth? This is something that, unless I've missed it, it's not discussed in the article. It all sounds like wishful thinking or, indeed, a political PR spin.
- NickNameNick 9y ago
  I wish there were more numbers in the article. It looks like they've used the automation to densify the shelving in the warehouse, and they've streamlined the picker and placer jobs. So the same square footage of warehouse, and same headcount, now has substantially more storage, and higher throughput. Which probably allows savings on the number of facilities they need to operate, or at least the rate at which they build them.

sokoloff 9y ago

I'm not following. Suppose they "normally" ran 150 full time employees and 150 temp workers for holiday peak. Suppose they have a 25% attrition rate. (37 of those 150 employees quit voluntarily.) After the robots, they could have 115 employees working and still not laid anyone off. Yet, in terms of full time employment, they went from 150 to 115 and in terms of temp labor went from 150 to 0. Did the robots destroy jobs in such a case? I'd think "yes". (I still support the deployment of robots in such cases; I'm only responding to the logical argument here, not the philosophical implications thereof.)

microcolonel 9y ago
> Suppose they have a 25% attrition rate. (37 of those 125 workers quit voluntarily.) Why would they retain employees which they would not rehire (minus wages in place of hiring cost)? They have no obligation to retain these workers, so clearly Amazon's base (non-seasonal) demand for labour increases fast enough to justify retaining them. At the current rate you would expect them to hire more labour, not less. The human jobs described here are still so far beyond current robotic technology that it's likely there will be no easy gains in automation here. Meanwhile, as Amazon's efficiency increases, throughput will also increase, which means demand for labour will continue to increase even if there are marginal increases in automation.
- vertex-four 9y ago
  > Why would they retain employees which they would not rehire (minus wages in place of hiring cost)? For good relations with the Government which has a goal of decreasing unemployment, and avoiding bad PR in popular media? If you can wait a couple of months to achieve exactly the same outcome with fewer risks, why not. > Meanwhile, as Amazon's efficiency increases, throughput will also increase No, throughput is a function of demand, not efficiency, unless Amazon is currently backlogged.
  - markvdb 9y ago
    > For good relations with the Government which has a goal of decreasing unemployment, and avoiding bad PR in popular media? If you can wait a couple of months to achieve exactly the same outcome with fewer risks, why not. This. Technically, centralisation has given amazon the scale to automate. Socially, that same scale of centralisation exposes them to more critical eyes. Their main vulnerability I guess...
kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
They also remove the need to make future hires, expanding the workforce to match growth. There is a lost "opportunity cost" of unrealized employment caused by massive automation. The reallocation of labor during the throes of the industrial revolution worked because the new technologies needed constant care and babysitting. Reliable machines that need infrequent service will not need much maintenance staff.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  The reallocation of labour also worked because demand for consumer goods increased dramatically as mere living effectively became cheaper.

hectorlorenzo 9y ago

Maybe no people were laid off, and they are hiring like crazy. But they are growing like hyper-crazy. The question is: would they've hired more people if it wasn't for automation? Are they hiring at a proportional rate of their growth? This is something that, unless I've missed it, it's not discussed in the article. It all sounds like wishful thinking or, indeed, a political PR spin.

NickNameNick 9y ago
I wish there were more numbers in the article. It looks like they've used the automation to densify the shelving in the warehouse, and they've streamlined the picker and placer jobs. So the same square footage of warehouse, and same headcount, now has substantially more storage, and higher throughput. Which probably allows savings on the number of facilities they need to operate, or at least the rate at which they build them.