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When unpacking the quote I read: 1) Jeff Bezos saw his warehouse workforce as necessary but replaceable 2) He feared that workers who remained at the company

When unpacking the quote I read: 1) Jeff Bezos saw his warehouse workforce as necessary but replaceable 2) He feared that workers who remained at the company too long would turn complacent or, worse, disgruntled The two statements seem relatively disconnected (which makes the "and" a little confusing). Anyway, while I understand a) (not saying I agree) and am a little confused by b), how both or either would logically lead to your conclusion is not obvious to me. Can you elaborate?

lisper 4y ago
"Complacent and disgruntled" is the problem Bezos was trying to solve. "Replaceable" is the circumstance that he leveraged to produce his solution: hire a continual stream of fresh non-complacent non-disgruntled people and fire them before they have a change to become complacent and disgruntled. Creating a work environment where long-term workers become happy and productive rather than complacent and disgruntled, i.e. the kind of work environment that their current PR campaign portrays, apparently never entered into his thinking. Which makes it hard for me to sympathize that Amazon is now running out of fresh non-complacent non-disgruntled people to feed their process and has to resort to PR campaigns in order to attract fresh victims.
- burntoutfire 4y ago
  > Creating a work environment where long-term workers become happy and productive Is there a large (or even mid-sized) tech company that managed to achieve it? I've never heard of one and I don't think it's possible. At scale these companies operate, senior level jobs are about navigating the organization and its bureucracy and there aren't many people who find that kind of work fun. Especially people who have an engineering mindset. The tech jobs in bigger companies are mostly meh at best an their biggest saving grace is the pay. Bezos realizes that and tries to work with this reality. Most big cos work because they've found way to extract enough value of out their people who'd rather not be there (but the pay and stability is too good), and tech is no exception.
  - lisper 4y ago
    > I don't think it's possible. It is manifestly possible. The Germans do it. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236165/german-workers-satisfied-not-engaged.aspx https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236165/german-workers-satis... The reason it doesn't happen in the U.S. is that workers have been systematically stripped of all of their power, so corporate management now answers exclusively to shareholders. Trying to make life better for your workers puts you at a competitive disadvantage. But it does not have to be that way. All we have to do to change it is to decide that it needs to change.
    - burntoutfire 4y ago
      German economy is famous for being based on small and mid-sized companies (which are often the best in the world at the ultra-specialized thing that they do). My post was on impossiblity of high job satisfaction levels in big organizations, I don't think it's as bad for the mid-sized and small shops.
      - lisper 4y ago
        There are 29 German companies in the Fortune Global 500, each with tens or hundreds of thousands of employees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_German_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_German_compani...
        barry-cotter 4y ago
        Most of those companies are well over 100 years old. I can’t be certain that Adidas in Germany is a terrible place to work but I can say that China HQ is bad enough to get workaholics to bail on it, worse than Amazon China. Germany’s underperformance in founding new companies in the last 50 years is puzzling but I doubt shorter work hours really explain it. They’re actually working every single one of those hours.
      - KennyBlanken 4y ago
        > German economy is famous for being based on small and mid-sized companies Companies under 500 people are responsible for half of the jobs in the US. Companies under 20 workers are ~15% of the employment market. https://cdn.advocacy.sba.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/04144224/2020-Small-Business-Economic-Profile-US.pdf https://cdn.advocacy.sba.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/0414...

lisper 4y ago

"Complacent and disgruntled" is the problem Bezos was trying to solve. "Replaceable" is the circumstance that he leveraged to produce his solution: hire a continual stream of fresh non-complacent non-disgruntled people and fire them before they have a change to become complacent and disgruntled. Creating a work environment where long-term workers become happy and productive rather than complacent and disgruntled, i.e. the kind of work environment that their current PR campaign portrays, apparently never entered into his thinking. Which makes it hard for me to sympathize that Amazon is now running out of fresh non-complacent non-disgruntled people to feed their process and has to resort to PR campaigns in order to attract fresh victims.

burntoutfire 4y ago
> Creating a work environment where long-term workers become happy and productive Is there a large (or even mid-sized) tech company that managed to achieve it? I've never heard of one and I don't think it's possible. At scale these companies operate, senior level jobs are about navigating the organization and its bureucracy and there aren't many people who find that kind of work fun. Especially people who have an engineering mindset. The tech jobs in bigger companies are mostly meh at best an their biggest saving grace is the pay. Bezos realizes that and tries to work with this reality. Most big cos work because they've found way to extract enough value of out their people who'd rather not be there (but the pay and stability is too good), and tech is no exception.
- lisper 4y ago
  > I don't think it's possible. It is manifestly possible. The Germans do it. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236165/german-workers-satisfied-not-engaged.aspx https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236165/german-workers-satis... The reason it doesn't happen in the U.S. is that workers have been systematically stripped of all of their power, so corporate management now answers exclusively to shareholders. Trying to make life better for your workers puts you at a competitive disadvantage. But it does not have to be that way. All we have to do to change it is to decide that it needs to change.
  - burntoutfire 4y ago
    German economy is famous for being based on small and mid-sized companies (which are often the best in the world at the ultra-specialized thing that they do). My post was on impossiblity of high job satisfaction levels in big organizations, I don't think it's as bad for the mid-sized and small shops.
    - lisper 4y ago
      There are 29 German companies in the Fortune Global 500, each with tens or hundreds of thousands of employees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_German_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_German_compani...
      - barry-cotter 4y ago
        Most of those companies are well over 100 years old. I can’t be certain that Adidas in Germany is a terrible place to work but I can say that China HQ is bad enough to get workaholics to bail on it, worse than Amazon China. Germany’s underperformance in founding new companies in the last 50 years is puzzling but I doubt shorter work hours really explain it. They’re actually working every single one of those hours.
    - KennyBlanken 4y ago
      > German economy is famous for being based on small and mid-sized companies Companies under 500 people are responsible for half of the jobs in the US. Companies under 20 workers are ~15% of the employment market. https://cdn.advocacy.sba.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/04144224/2020-Small-Business-Economic-Profile-US.pdf https://cdn.advocacy.sba.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/0414...