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Comment by nisa | Hacker News Reader

Worked in a warehouse for a german online retailer as a picker a few years back - tracking everything you do is totally normal - people worked through breaks to reach their limit, too and the break is a joke because it's a huge hall and more than 50% of the time is spend reaching the break-area and to go back.

Someone at Amazon basically throught why does a human have to look at the statistics after a few months and replaced it with some code - but besides that, that tracking and pressure is probably common in almost all online retailer warehouses. Maybe some cynic asshole thought that not letting the team-lead to do firing prevents keeping employees that perform bad but have good reasons for it - like beeing older or having medical problems.

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>Someone at Amazon basically throught why does a human have to look at the statistics after a few months and replaced it with some code

I wonder too if its also someone who wanted to avoid the confrontation of having to make the decision. "We've noticed you've been under-performing and you haven't been meeting your quotas for the past x weeks" vs "The tracking system has determined that you have been under performing and so we have to let you go." It may seem close to the same, but its always easier to say it was someone else or something that decided instead of you.

Why ? What's the big deal if a package costs a few more cents to fulfill?

Is it a competitive disadvantage - or just standard greed ?

Amazon's sales are in the billions of items annually [1]

If you can save two cents on each of 5 billion packages, you save $100 million per year. Most employers will give raises and promotions to people who deliver operational expense savings that large.

[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312518... Five billion items to prime users

The problem with this is the savings are usually negligible compared to spendings of higher management.

I think it utterly destroys the image of the company if it cannot act "humane".

It's fine to keep costs under control ..but..if you are then organizing super expensive meetings across the world it just looks bad.

It is a competitive disadvantage. That's how Walmart got to where they are, they cared about a "few more cents" for each item, which adds up in high volume low margin businesses, and crushed everyone in their market.

Ever day low cost is the motto

To me, nothing. On a macro scale? Everything.

Exactly. One package that costs 5 cents more? 10? 100? Not a big deal.

50 millions packages that cost 5 cents more? Kind of big deal.

> Why ? What's the big deal if a package costs a few more cents to fulfill?

When you shop online, do you choose the most expensive purchase option? Or perhaps the least?

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