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You know those help wanted commercials Amazon floods media with, "We pay $15 to start, blah, blah. Start a new career." I just assumed they were always hiring

You know those help wanted commercials Amazon floods media with, "We pay $15 to start, blah, blah. Start a new career." I just assumed they were always hiring because of consistent growth. According to the guy (forget his name. Wears a gold chain.) representing the union; Amazon fires a lot of employees. Many for no reason. (I once read a restaurant success book. Everything he recommended made sence, except one, and it does make sence, but it's weaselly. His recommendation to restaurants was to fire all employees every six months. Turn over the semi-skilled completely. His reasoning was a new employee didn't complain, didn't steal (this was before companies had cams everywhere, gps tracking, and wrist movment counters), and worked harder.) I believe this is Amazon strategy. It's usually a bit harder to fire union workers for no reason. Fire them before they can see the inequities in the company.

coliveira 4y ago
You're completely right. Amazon strategy is to maintain constant turnover, so that employees never feel they have stability and can't complain of anything.
wardedVibe 4y ago
Another benefit of firing workers early is it increases churn, which makes forming unions in the first place difficult, since it relies on trust between workers.
- oicU00 4y ago
  Same idea seems work in public favor when firing politicians frequently: https://www.nber.org/papers/w29766 https://www.nber.org/papers/w29766
- infiniteL0Op 4y ago
Ekaros 4y ago
Having watched the HVAC videos about restaurants and walking freezers with doors left open by new employees causing problems for hardware and their operation in general. Maybe that isn't best solution. Then again maybe returns on other side cover any such issues... Which I rather doubt that you can train them in all things in that timeframe...
abvdj2 4y ago
There's an internal tool showing how many total employees (~1m at that time iirc) where hired after/before you for . After somewhere between 6months-12months I was somewhere in the middle, meaning about 500k employees must have left and new 500k joined. Just to give an estimate. Covid might have contributed to that though, probaly more temp workers than usual.

coliveira 4y ago

You're completely right. Amazon strategy is to maintain constant turnover, so that employees never feel they have stability and can't complain of anything.

wardedVibe 4y ago

Another benefit of firing workers early is it increases churn, which makes forming unions in the first place difficult, since it relies on trust between workers.

oicU00 4y ago
Same idea seems work in public favor when firing politicians frequently: https://www.nber.org/papers/w29766 https://www.nber.org/papers/w29766
infiniteL0Op 4y ago

Ekaros 4y ago

Having watched the HVAC videos about restaurants and walking freezers with doors left open by new employees causing problems for hardware and their operation in general. Maybe that isn't best solution. Then again maybe returns on other side cover any such issues... Which I rather doubt that you can train them in all things in that timeframe...

abvdj2 4y ago

There's an internal tool showing how many total employees (~1m at that time iirc) where hired after/before you for . After somewhere between 6months-12months I was somewhere in the middle, meaning about 500k employees must have left and new 500k joined. Just to give an estimate. Covid might have contributed to that though, probaly more temp workers than usual.