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I love how this article is speculating on what crazy things Amazon must be building by adding that many people. I'll tell you what they're building: fulfillment

I love how this article is speculating on what crazy things Amazon must be building by adding that many people. I'll tell you what they're building: fulfillment centers and call centers. About 5 years ago when Amazon had around 15K employees worldwide and they only had 3K in Seattle and only a few small dev centers around the world. So even if every single person in Seattle was working on development that still only accounts for 20% of the workforce. I can't find up to date numbers on the number of people in each location but considering there's now 40 FCs worldwide I don't think my math can be that far off. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com#Locations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com#Locations) If I had to bet, I'd say 2000 of 11000 new employees are either developers, dev managers, or project managers. It might also be worth asking when the headcount for Zappos got tacked onto Amazon.com.

brianbreslin 15y ago
They are supposedly adding 9 new fulfillment centers this year after adding 11 or 12 last year to meet demand. They had over 50 fulfillment centers at the end of 2010. Thats most likely the source for the majority of their new hires.
neuroelectronic 15y ago
1,900 were hired in Seattle alone. I saw that recently on /r/Seattle. Considering their orders are reported to be 40% year over year, 15k - 3k IT staff = 12k x 1.4 ^ 5 is 65k. They only have half that staff total so their efficiency and scaling improvements in distribution means they have to higher less people year over year for warehouse staff. This is all uninformed speculation. The only public number I've seen is 1,900 hired in Seattle over a 3 month period. That means a lot more than 2k were probably hired for development, which means that Amazon is definitely up to something.
- tylerrooney 15y ago
  1,900 in Seattle in a 3-month span is a huge number. Knowing that, perhaps they are spending an insane amount of developer time just interviewing more developers. There's also a forward fulfillment center in Bellevue which might count as Seattle headcount.

brianbreslin 15y ago

They are supposedly adding 9 new fulfillment centers this year after adding 11 or 12 last year to meet demand. They had over 50 fulfillment centers at the end of 2010. Thats most likely the source for the majority of their new hires.

neuroelectronic 15y ago

1,900 were hired in Seattle alone. I saw that recently on /r/Seattle. Considering their orders are reported to be 40% year over year, 15k - 3k IT staff = 12k x 1.4 ^ 5 is 65k. They only have half that staff total so their efficiency and scaling improvements in distribution means they have to higher less people year over year for warehouse staff. This is all uninformed speculation. The only public number I've seen is 1,900 hired in Seattle over a 3 month period. That means a lot more than 2k were probably hired for development, which means that Amazon is definitely up to something.

tylerrooney 15y ago
1,900 in Seattle in a 3-month span is a huge number. Knowing that, perhaps they are spending an insane amount of developer time just interviewing more developers. There's also a forward fulfillment center in Bellevue which might count as Seattle headcount.