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Amazon executives are worried they'll run out of people to employ
- hourislate 5y agoI'm under the assumption they are doing everything they can to figure out how to automate the whole warehouse before they run out of people. if not, perhaps a Union can save them by creating an environment where workers aren't driven like some beast working a field. The reality is that is there main advantage, working people close to death. Walmart looks like a great place when you consider how AMZN treats their employees.
- staticautomatic 5y agoSome beast working a field would be treated quite well. If you’re a subsistence farmer who relies on an animal for ploughing and it gets injured because you drive it too hard, you’re totally screwed.
- atatatat 5y agoAnd yet...people bought new horses after doing this, regularly.
- olliej 5y agoNot the subsistence ones
- Retric 5y agoActual substance farming doesn’t get to use beasts of burden. Farmers need trade with an outside source to get new horses after the old one dies. However, a farm at break even can be paying for needed supplies like horses, which is in effect subsistence farming because there is no long term surplus.
- Emma_Goldman 5y agoThat's the point, they're treated as a locus of labour power and nothing more. Workers are hired solely to drain as much labour power from them as possible, a condition of which is obviously giving them the rudimentary means of reproduction. Keep in mind your argument applies equally to chattel slaves, in fact even more so: for they were owneed, whereas Amazon merely rents its labour, and in case of ill-health can easily replace them. I don't think slaves were, by any meaningful standard, 'treated quite well' - and neither do I think most Amazon workers are.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- staticautomatic 5y agoNo, my point is that this analogy conveys something other than what the author intended to convey.
- Emma_Goldman 5y agoThat Amazon doesn't work its employees to the literal point of death, only up to the point at which they are unable to continue to work? There are many gradations of suffering and torment up to that limit, that are more than sufficient to wreck someone's life.
- staticautomatic 5y agoNo, that farmers don’t work their animals to the point that they’re unable to work.
- Emma_Goldman 5y agoI don't know if you're being deliberately obtuse, because that's exactly what I said in my last comment. I'm arguing that 'not exploiting a sentient being under one's control to the point of death' is a low standard consistent with all kinds of terrors. I'm assuming you weren't just randomly throwing your comment into the cybervoid. The person to whom you responded said that Amazon employees might prefer a company where 'workers aren't driven like some beast working a field' - implying that they are treated as such at Amazon. You suggested that beasts aren't treated so badly by their masters, which following the analogy, suggests that Amazon workers aren't treated so badly. I'm countering that suggestion.
- pjc50 5y agoImmediately reminded of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_(Animal_Farm) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_(Animal_Farm) , the horse in Orwell's analogy for Stalinism.
- newsclues 5y agoThey bought kiva robotics years ago
- bostonsre 5y agoI've heard Walmart warehouses are also incredibly bad to work in. They are just less adept at scaling micromanagement well. I'm sure they absolutely would push workers harder if they knew how. Their management is just as soulless as Amazon's.
- justanotherguy0 5y agoSourcing and training new people all the time just can't be cheaper than better working conditions. I don't get it.
- missedthecue 5y agoIt's not difficult to train someone to tape a box or pull an item off a shelf. It would take a slow learner 10 or 15 minutes.
- quantified 5y agoMight be the working conditions.
- atopuzov 5y agoshocked pikachu face
- mikewarot 5y agoI suspect they are demanding more physical stamina out of workers than they can safely sustain.
- sombremesa 5y agoHere's the explanation: the titular "executive" is a "former Amazon manager who oversaw human-resources efforts".
- rualca 5y agoI would add that having to pay hiring bonuses for people to not stick around after only a few days is also a red flag regarding extremely degrading working conditions.
- hulitu 5y agoIt is about growth. When you hire 10 people and 10 people leave you still hired 10 people and this looks very good on company presentations. Also they usually hire young people who have no idea how much they worth. And no experience means lower pay. It works so well in a lot of companies.
- tr_user 5y agoWorried that there is absolutely no way to improve working conditions? You might be a villain.
- MattGaiser 5y agoI want some stats on how this breaks down. Are 50% staying a year and 50% a few weeks? Or do they burn out most people pretty quickly?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Gunax 5y agoIs this any different than any other business? What's the turnover at McDonald's?
- kube-system 5y agoAccording to this, up to the same 150% rate: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/29/fast-food-restaurants-in-america-are-losing-100percent-of-workers-every-year.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/29/fast-food-restaurants-in-ame...
- jdmoreira 5y agoJust another day in our dystopian Present. The insanity.
- rlpb 5y agoNo mention of basic economics in the article? It's rarely a case of "running out", merely the economics of supply and demand. If supply is low and demand is high, expect the price to rise. In this case, that means that if you don't pay the price, you can expect to lose (or continue losing) the workers. In other words, it sounds to me that they aren't offering the pay and conditions the market requires.
- rm445 5y agoThe interesting wrinkle is that they seem to need to source unusually energetic and resilient people, and instead they're hiring at some lower bar and having enormous turnover. It's an unusual twist on clearing the market - arguably they ought to raise wages, not so much to retain people by paying them enough that they stick it out in hell a bit longer, but so they can clear the market for people able to tolerate and thrive in the working conditions.
- bostonsre 5y agoYea, it is shitty back breaking work where you are micromanaged a ton. They could either raise the pay or they could stop pushing their workers to be miserable machines so much to make the work more tolerable. I hope they do both. This is by far the best news I've heard about Amazon warehouses. It's so incredibly awesome that there might be something that Amazon can't lobby against that could force them to be more nice to their employees.
- rm445 5y agoPreach. I did warehouse work years back in my teens, trundling around with a pallet truck picking orders was moderately enjoyable but it was inherently obvious that if the management had 'raised the temperature' by micromanaging us or demanding more output it would have become horrible. Another thing that was apparent was that some people were just better order-pickers than me. One part of my post above was kinda wondering how Amazon would do if they kept the demanding work, but paid enough to recruit (and treated well enough to retain) physical outliers, a bunch of warehouse athletes. I've visited a car factory, a well-run Japanese marque, where it was mentioned that they had very high initial turnover - some people just couldn't take the pace of the production line - but high longer-term retention. In a sense they must be doing something right.
- willcipriano 5y agoIf you recall a few years ago, Amazon raised wages to a $15 an hour and some said that this wasn't a move made out of altruism like they claimed, but instead due to the work conditions of their warehouses. In the last few months other large firms have offered wages in excess of $15 per hour, the Wal-Mart local to me has huge banners all over the store offering $17.75 for example. It appears that those who doubted the largesse of Amazon have been proven right. Amazon is probably going to need to move to $20-$25 given how demanding they are.
- bdcravens 5y agoHEB (Texas grocery chain rated among the top in the country) here is advertising warehouse jobs at 17.50 I think the real loser here ends up being restaurants wondering why they can't get people for 2.15+tips
- chitowneats 5y agoGood.
- _fat_santa 5y agoThat's a bad comparison though. Warehouse work is hard hard work, much harder than being a server. It's also a matter of where these warehouses are. Back when I was in college I took a job as a stock clerk at Publix, I got paid more than some supervisors ($12/hr in 2015), but my god was that the hardest job I've ever had. You're basically lifting for 6-8hrs straight.
- AuryGlenz 5y agoAt some restaurants you’d be worse off but those tips add up. Presuming you get 15% all you’d need to do is $100 served in an hour to catch up. Obviously there are fast and slow times but at a reasonably busy place you’re probably coming out ahead. Not to mention servers collect most of that tax free when they shouldn’t. I heard a report on NPR a few weeks ago where they were lamenting how much servers make and we’re basing their data on reported income to the IRS. Hah.
- blueyes 5y agoThere are a bunch of things they can do: * raise wages * change job conditions * build better filters for who they hire Right now, you can apply for a job at Amazon through a Web form and get a response back in 15 min. An algorithm, some parts of it powered by ML, is probably doing that. And it's probably creating false negatives. Look at who it's rejecting, and improve the algorithm.
- kube-system 5y agoI'm not sure that it's possible to do too much filtering on who you hire when you're hiring a half-million people in a single year.
- frumper 5y agoThey should just make a smartwatch app for their application process. Detect a pulse? Hired!
- dawnerd 5y agoFiltering would help turnover. There’s no reason why hiring half a million a year isn’t enough. It means there’s a problem with the company, not the job pool.
- kube-system 5y agoIf workers are overworked because the workload is too large, filtering prospective hires more could make turnover worse. Many hands make light work.
- ghoward 5y agoI think your last sentence is the key to Amazon's problem. They have the money; they just don't want to spend it.
- slowmovintarget 5y agoFiltering would help only if the wages are suitably high enough to make similar jobs less attractive. The Fulfillment Center work is reportedly harder than other work that pays the same or better. If the wages are higher, it would be worth working harder for Amazon and staying. That's how a healthy labor market works.
- akomtu 5y agoThe problem would be solved overnight if the gov allowed short term serfdom contracts.
- wizzwizz4 5y agoHence why it doesn't.
- at_a_remove 5y agoI am still surprised that they didn't buy Boston Dynamics. I would have been all over that. Perhaps they know something I do not.
- amelius 5y agoCan they already do order picking?
- throwkeep 5y agoSame, I don't understand it. Also still surprised that Google sold them.
- killjoywashere 5y agoA non-trivial amount of Boston Dynamics' funding came from DoD. Pretty sure Google was not interested in sustaining those contracts but without them it was likely a net loss.
- caseysoftware 5y agoGoogle knew that going in. Even if it hadn't been public knowledge (it was), it would have come out during due diligence. There has to be a different reason, we just can't tell what it is.
- marktangotango 5y agoMy assumption is that the tech makes good videos, but is basically limited in what it can do, without someone always offscreen handling the controls.
- deepserket 5y agoif they automatize too fast then people will call for UBI... that's my guess
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- zero_deg_kevin 5y agoThey're not running out of people to employ, their product (working in an Amazon warehouse) sucks, the market knows it, and Amazon is stuck with the excess inventory. If they want to solve the problem, they can improve product/market fit.
- napolux 5y agoOr just go "full robots"
- mikepurvis 5y agoIt seems pretty clear that they're trying to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Robotics#Acquisition_by_Amazon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Robotics#Acquisition_by... But I guess thus far they've found that just burning through human labour is more cost effective. Perhaps upgrades to labour conditions/wages via unionization, regulation, etc would change that calculus.
- mabbo 5y agoYou say that like it's a choice to be made and not a project that remains permanently 5 years away.
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoMany warehouses or portions of warehouses (for retailers that deal in a much narrower range of products than amazon) are already fully automated. These are usually in slightly higher "marginal cost of sending the wrong stuff" industries. For some manufacturing facilities the robots pick all the parts and then the humans take the "shipment" of parts to the actual line and distribute it to the relevant stations.
- mabbo 5y agoAnd that works well if you have a small number of SKUs with a set weight and dimensions. Amazon has billions of SKUs. The robotics and ML needed to be able to open a storage bin, see what items are inside, choose the one you are looking for- and only it- and then carefully pull it out without disturbing the other items, that is the problem Amazon faces with full automation. You could reduce the number of SKUs per bin, but then you have a storage problem- there's way more SKUs than bins in a building. You could go slower, but then you have a throughput problem. It's really, really hard. And while humans have a high opex, they're really good at that particular problem. Hands and eyes are incredible tools. Robotics is catching up though, and it's awesome, but it's not there yet. Source: I spent many years working in Amazon Fulfillment Tech (and these opinions are my own and do not represent me speaking for the company).
- killjoywashere 5y agoMaybe if they stopped their hire-to-fire strategy?
- myth_drannon 5y agoThat was for software developers not warehouse employees.
- sleepybrett 5y agoSimilar problem eventually. I'm an SDE in the Seattle area, I won't work for Amazon specifically because of the hire-to-fire practices. I saw that at MS back in the day I don't need to put myself through that... Generally speaking I get at least 2-5 contacts a month on linkedin trying to hire for amazon.
- corpMaverick 5y agoLooks like new people quit right away. I wonder if they have a ramp up time to allow their new associates body's to adapt to the very physical demands of the job. Same as you don´ t start hiking 20 miles a day, you need to start small and let your body adapt over a few weeks.
- wincy 5y agoThey don’t. My friend weighs North of 300 pounds. He dropped 25 of it his first month working at Amazon in the warehouse.
- Frost1x 5y agoShort of further machine automation, I wouldn't be surprised to see Amazon start promoting fitness programs in public middle- and high-schools: more gyms, lifting, running, etc. "Welcome to the new national Amazon gym program! Upon completion and after graduation, you'll have a guaranteed interview and job opportunity waiting for you at Amazon!" Leverage all the existing tax payer subsidized time, staff, materials in public schools. Furnish a few facilities with new equipment for publicity and image. They could even rustle up a few scholarships in a national competition to get kids interested and it would be a nominal fee for a physically fit workforce ready to sprint around warehouses and urinate/defecate in small containers.
- fassssst 5y agoDevelop exoskeletons to lessen the wear and tear on the human body. Provide nice noise cancelling headphones and a pleasant environment with plants and fresh air and good light. Augment people rather than trying to replace them.
- adenozine 5y agoI love the optimism. isn't it exhausting thinking like this, though? They couldn't care less about the poor folks in the warehouses. I've seen some of that stuff, it's completely horrifying. Jeff is getting fat, stepping back, and going to space. I don't think he's gonna spruce the place up and put free cokes in the fridge anytime soon.
- xtracto 5y agoHah, you make it sound as if the idea of exoskeletons was for altruist reasons. I think it very well can be a profit based decision. How much can a person lift, walk, etc in 8 hours a day?. With an Exo they could do it maybe 1.5 times faster, which would mean a 50% gain in performance. With a low enough price per Exo, it can make economic sense.
- underseacables 5y agoIt’s hard to read this article without pre-conceptions about Amazon. For some reason this made me think of North Korea, what happens when you kill enough people that you have no one left?
- abz10 5y agoClearly they need a seasonal workers visa program like what farmers have. There are many people south of the boarder who are not afraid of a hard days work. Something must be done about this unskilled labor shortage. /sarc I’m one of those tech people that wouldn’t work at Amazon no matter how much they paid me. Friends that did appear to be suffering PTSD many years later.
- TheAdamAndChe 5y agoI'd rather they keep them out and raise either pay or quality of life instead. Quality of life hasn't risen with productivity increases in decades.
- perryizgr8 5y agoUsually "we are running out of people to employ" translates to "we are not willing to pay fair wages to our workers". It is just baseless whining.
- over_bridge 5y agoIts the same nonsense you hear from fruit growers. "We can't find anyone to hire so we need the government to issue more temporary visas for foreign workers" (New Zealand) They'll try anything except offer a fair labour price
- lamontcg 5y agoThis was happening even with Software Developers and System Engineers back in ~2005. They go around nickel and diming everything with their employees, topgrading everyone on 360 performance reviews and then have offsites where they tightly clutch their pearls over how they just can't understand why retaining talent is so hard. Unless you're lucky enough to get hired into a group which is highly thought of, it can be a really bad place to work, even if you're getting paid a lot. Someone really needs to buy each of the Amazon executive team one of those "the only consistent feature of all your dissatisfying relationships is you" coffee mugs.
- oceanghost 5y agoExactly. I am unemployed (watching kiddos until the pandemic ends and schools open), and I wouldn't even CONSIDER Amazon despite getting dozens of recruitment e-mails from them a year. It's always the same with these companies-- they "can't find enough talent" but the recruiters glad-hand the candidates but the interviews are tough and arbitrary. If you get/take the job-- stacked ranking will burn you out and fire you when you have children, a health problem, family problem etc, or dare age, or stand up for yourself.
- baccheion 5y agoThey have high turnover across the board. Another reason they don't do the typical 25%/year stock vest. 5% vests each of the first 2 years, with a catch up at year 3.
- nashashmi 5y agoLow wage jobs typically have high turnover rates. It is why unions are established, so that people can see these jobs as lifelong careers and places where you need to be committed with a membership. Plus unions increase quality of the trade.
- baccheion 5y agoThe equity strategy is used at least among software engineers.
- DrBenCarson 5y agoThey’ll deploy a new AWS service that enables cloud-based reproduction. Features may include provisioning (remote insemination), managed service accounts (OB/GYN), and deep learning RBAC (child-rearing). Can’t wait!
- swiley 5y agoX shortage is another way of saying the price of X is too low.
- gruez 5y agoThe agreeableness of that statement is directly porportional to how much sympathy you have for the buyer. "all those CEOs complaining about a worker shortage are just cheapskates not willing to pay more!" vs "all those millennials complaining about a housing shortage are just cheapskates not willing to pay more!"
- swiley 5y ago>"all those millennials complaining about a housing shortage are just cheapskates not willing to pay more!" Or because boomers are preventing construction because it would lower their property value.
- gruez 5y agoThe equivalent to that for worker shortage would be "the government paying people (unemployment) to stay at home, in some cases more than what they'd make if they had a job".