3 ms·

Um this is standard Time and Motion stuff from 1920's this is SOP for any factory production line going back a hundred years or more.

• dpwm 7y ago
  Yes, and the criticisms of Taylorism are fairly well-developed. In fact, a lot of the criticisms of Amazon's practices are much the same. With Amazon's level of data collection on individual warehouse and logistic workers, it puts them in a place that Taylorists of the 80s could only dream of. At least in the UK, they've found a way to make sure that they are in no way directly financially responsible for any of the externalities of what their approach does to workers, chiefly by pulling tricks like having their workers hired on an agency basis through subcontractors. I'm not saying this is wrong, it's just what they've done. They have spent the money and found a way to operate that is more efficient. It's what they do, and it's how they sold themselves to a group that included me. I also found the whole thing to be a bit contradictory: software engineers at a multiple of the pay of warehouse engineers working on optimizing the warehouse that is probably almost near optimal. Perhaps if I had been quicker-witted, I'd have asked if we found a way to make the software engineers working on shaving a second off the path around the warehouse more efficient, would they make them do it.