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I never understand Amazon's uncompromising stance on efficiency. They'll immediately fire a worker who is a few percentage points below target efficiency. Surel

I never understand Amazon's uncompromising stance on efficiency. They'll immediately fire a worker who is a few percentage points below target efficiency. Surely the grind in turnover has to cost them something. What if they moved towards a more incentive based system. Workers who do 60% efficiency targets get minimum wage. 70% gets minimum wage + $X.YY and hour. 100% gets typical wage rate. Adjust hourly wages up and down for the next day, based on the previous days productivity. Then nobody has to get fired for only being at 96% productivity that day. Perhaps the increased job security would offset the somewhat dystopian productivity tracking this would result in. Workers might prefer to work a day at 85% wages to get back up to 100%, than to be fired? Though, I suspect treating their workers better and giving them more benefits, security, and humanity would be about cost neutral compared to their intense current system of treating workers like cogs. You can only squeeze someone for so long.

ars 4y ago
That's not that different from doing piecework. > Though, I suspect treating their workers better and giving them more benefits, security, and humanity would be about cost neutral compared to their intense current system of treating workers like cogs. You can only squeeze someone for so long. I only see stories of bad treatment from activists, interviews I've seen with actual employees say they are happy with the work, and "people who complain have never done warehouse work".
- aaronbrethorst 4y ago
  150% annual attrition is not a sign of a healthy workplace. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/15/us/amazon-workers.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/15/us/amazon-wor...
  - tick_tock_tick 4y ago
    It's a warehouse job that demands real physical labour each day of course people leave if they get a better offer or even a worse offer that requires less work.
    - throw_nbvc1234 4y ago
      It's 3 times the rates reported by BLS though they group "Transportation, warehousing, and utilities" into a single category. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t16.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t16.htm
    - eptcyka 4y ago
      It's also a job that will be there until it can be automated or until Amazon closes, and I think it's the latter that's the closest to happening. Until that happens, it'd be better for everyone involved if the tasks that need doing can be arranged so that long-term employment is viable. A job shouldn't be as exploitative as it can be just because there will be someone who's in a rough enough spot in their life that they will take it.
  - fraserharris 4y ago
    Is that attrition rate inclusive of seasonal employees?
    - aaronbrethorst 4y ago
      The NYT article I linked to accounts for seasonal workforce differences and has a lengthy methodology section at the bottom.
- eptcyka 4y ago
hemloc_io 4y ago
I have some small insight into this. Often at Amazon you have the "Frugality" principal taking the wheel for short term savings, even with long term massive costs. They're notoriously cheap, think like no free coffee cheap. One of Jeff's guiding principals that he infused the company with, is that workers are lazy and will take advantage of any moment to not be productive if you let them. If you're nice to your workforce they'll take advantage of your kindness to do nothing. This happens on the corporate side too with all the PIP stuff. In the long term I don't think this is going to work at all, either they need to change their policy and attitude or literally no-one will work there given the choice lol. (This is more on the SWE/Corporate side and less on the warehouse side, often Amazon is the only/best game in town on the warehouse side which makes things more tricky.) E.g. At their current attrition rate they will run out of workers in the whole country in a couple of years assuming they keep it up.
- oh_sigh 4y ago
  Actually, at the Amazon office in NYC, the one thing we did get was free coffee :) But it wasn't one of those fancy machines at other FANGs where you press cappuccino and you get a cappuccino. It was more like one salvaged from an old diner, where you would load a couple cups of grinds into a filter and it would percolate down into a gallon jug.
  - hemloc_io 4y ago
    Haha same for us in the West Coast offices. I was working with a senior engineer who was shocked we had one of those big machines when we came in to the office.
- nebula8804 4y ago
  >In the long term I don't think this is going to work at all, either they need to change their policy and attitude or literally no-one will work there given the choice lol. I wanna see what happens when they cross this threshold. I don't think any company in modern US history has had to deal with this scenario? I suspect they know this and are running out the clock before they are forced to raise wages to compensate. Essentially squeeze as much margin as they can now until they are force to dispense a few more crumbs. Its insane how crazy they are getting with the recruiters. I am a loser who spends too much time on HN. A terrible mediocre dev with no really outstanding roles, yet these people are now finding my internal company email and reaching out. They somehow found my private phone number and are texting me. Who knows what will happen next? Maybe they will knock on my window in the dead of night lol.
colinmhayes 4y ago
I think the mindset that explains amazon's decisions here is that their warehouse workers are only there because they haven't figured out how to automate them yet. Amazon's long term goal is to figure out how to make a robot that can grab items and put them into boxes quickly, but until then they're going to have people who they treat like robots do the work instead. One of the consequences of this mindset is they've made extremely easy to plug new hires in with minimal orientation. Everything is standardized and the computer is organizing everything, no thinking required means no training required.
- nebula8804 4y ago
  I feel like the whole company may one day go this route. Imagine a company run by an AI thats plugged into the market. No CEO needed, any jobs that haven't been automated will have tasks directly dispensed and monitored by this AI. Its primary goal will be to maximize shareholder value and it will do it with an efficiency and ruthlessness that even Elon Musk can't match. The coming end state of Amazon makes me appreciate my current boring CEO very much.
  - zhengyi13 4y ago
    We're gonna build a paperclip maximizer on purpose?
    - nebula8804 4y ago
      Why wouldn't we? Ironically the CEO may lose their job before the coders lol
    - sudosysgen 4y ago
      We already did, it's called the public corporation.
  - ben7799 4y ago
    AKA Phillip K. Dick's Autofac.. eventually manufacturing more consumers for itself to sell to.

ars 4y ago

That's not that different from doing piecework. > Though, I suspect treating their workers better and giving them more benefits, security, and humanity would be about cost neutral compared to their intense current system of treating workers like cogs. You can only squeeze someone for so long. I only see stories of bad treatment from activists, interviews I've seen with actual employees say they are happy with the work, and "people who complain have never done warehouse work".

aaronbrethorst 4y ago
150% annual attrition is not a sign of a healthy workplace. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/15/us/amazon-workers.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/15/us/amazon-wor...
- tick_tock_tick 4y ago
  It's a warehouse job that demands real physical labour each day of course people leave if they get a better offer or even a worse offer that requires less work.
  - throw_nbvc1234 4y ago
    It's 3 times the rates reported by BLS though they group "Transportation, warehousing, and utilities" into a single category. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t16.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t16.htm
  - eptcyka 4y ago
    It's also a job that will be there until it can be automated or until Amazon closes, and I think it's the latter that's the closest to happening. Until that happens, it'd be better for everyone involved if the tasks that need doing can be arranged so that long-term employment is viable. A job shouldn't be as exploitative as it can be just because there will be someone who's in a rough enough spot in their life that they will take it.
- fraserharris 4y ago
  Is that attrition rate inclusive of seasonal employees?
  - aaronbrethorst 4y ago
    The NYT article I linked to accounts for seasonal workforce differences and has a lengthy methodology section at the bottom.
eptcyka 4y ago

hemloc_io 4y ago

I have some small insight into this. Often at Amazon you have the "Frugality" principal taking the wheel for short term savings, even with long term massive costs. They're notoriously cheap, think like no free coffee cheap. One of Jeff's guiding principals that he infused the company with, is that workers are lazy and will take advantage of any moment to not be productive if you let them. If you're nice to your workforce they'll take advantage of your kindness to do nothing. This happens on the corporate side too with all the PIP stuff. In the long term I don't think this is going to work at all, either they need to change their policy and attitude or literally no-one will work there given the choice lol. (This is more on the SWE/Corporate side and less on the warehouse side, often Amazon is the only/best game in town on the warehouse side which makes things more tricky.) E.g. At their current attrition rate they will run out of workers in the whole country in a couple of years assuming they keep it up.

oh_sigh 4y ago
Actually, at the Amazon office in NYC, the one thing we did get was free coffee :) But it wasn't one of those fancy machines at other FANGs where you press cappuccino and you get a cappuccino. It was more like one salvaged from an old diner, where you would load a couple cups of grinds into a filter and it would percolate down into a gallon jug.
- hemloc_io 4y ago
  Haha same for us in the West Coast offices. I was working with a senior engineer who was shocked we had one of those big machines when we came in to the office.
nebula8804 4y ago
>In the long term I don't think this is going to work at all, either they need to change their policy and attitude or literally no-one will work there given the choice lol. I wanna see what happens when they cross this threshold. I don't think any company in modern US history has had to deal with this scenario? I suspect they know this and are running out the clock before they are forced to raise wages to compensate. Essentially squeeze as much margin as they can now until they are force to dispense a few more crumbs. Its insane how crazy they are getting with the recruiters. I am a loser who spends too much time on HN. A terrible mediocre dev with no really outstanding roles, yet these people are now finding my internal company email and reaching out. They somehow found my private phone number and are texting me. Who knows what will happen next? Maybe they will knock on my window in the dead of night lol.

colinmhayes 4y ago

I think the mindset that explains amazon's decisions here is that their warehouse workers are only there because they haven't figured out how to automate them yet. Amazon's long term goal is to figure out how to make a robot that can grab items and put them into boxes quickly, but until then they're going to have people who they treat like robots do the work instead. One of the consequences of this mindset is they've made extremely easy to plug new hires in with minimal orientation. Everything is standardized and the computer is organizing everything, no thinking required means no training required.

nebula8804 4y ago
I feel like the whole company may one day go this route. Imagine a company run by an AI thats plugged into the market. No CEO needed, any jobs that haven't been automated will have tasks directly dispensed and monitored by this AI. Its primary goal will be to maximize shareholder value and it will do it with an efficiency and ruthlessness that even Elon Musk can't match. The coming end state of Amazon makes me appreciate my current boring CEO very much.
- zhengyi13 4y ago
  We're gonna build a paperclip maximizer on purpose?
  - nebula8804 4y ago
    Why wouldn't we? Ironically the CEO may lose their job before the coders lol
  - sudosysgen 4y ago
    We already did, it's called the public corporation.
- ben7799 4y ago
  AKA Phillip K. Dick's Autofac.. eventually manufacturing more consumers for itself to sell to.