I've always wondered about this, at Amazon and also at Uber/Lyft/DoorDash etc... They seem to burn through people quite fast. Won't they all just run out of people at some point, or will just increasing pay bring enough people back?
If you find this worrying, don't - someone will be along shortly to spend a lot of words proving that this situation (the one where we require desperate people to exist so Elon and Jeff can make a few extra $billion) is somehow the best.
The people that were there when I started were rough guys, but they could do their job.
After I started the company apparently could only hire angry alcoholics, lazy stoners, and fresh out of jail domestic abusers who were proud of it. How many of these people could the job effectively, no.
Then the company had a merge and corporate came down with a brilliant plan to force all the fulltime employees (read legacy employees with some level of leadership responsibilities and the only ones good at their job) into part time positions or offer them severance to leave. You can imagine what happens.
So then it was me, a couple other guys, and a slew of incompetent bums. I managed to take advantage of the situation to demand a pathetic raise and near total autonomy of my hours. These concessions ended up being not enough and one night I decided not to show up anymore, as management was constantly moving responsibilities of their "friends" to use.
Luckily I had been using my time to make my break into the software industry. A couple years later, I read that triple merged company had to file for bankruptcy.
EDIT: I was really (naively) hoping this would be discussed maturely. Some clarifying points:
1. "mass immigration" is just intended in opposition to highly selective immigration policies (e.g., policies which allow highly educated or wealthy people to immigrate). This isn't a criticism or a value judgment, and indeed there's something noble and egalitarian about this.
2. observing that these two goals are contradictory doesn't imply ignobility or foolishness, but rather difficulty of task.
3. I'm not a "right-winger" nor do I have a political tribe. I'm not slinging anything at left-wing people.
Can't HN be the one place on the internet that isn't sullied by tribalism?
You said "left-wing folks typically want ... more mass immigration", which I disagree with, though not with any real authority or conviction (I wrote a separate comment about it). The rub is - coming from most people on the internet at large, I would assume that statement was purposefully uncharitable, but I think on HN, the chances that a person (you, in this case) is being honest are higher (i.e. that your opinion that left-wing people want more mass immigration is derived honestly and holistically to the best of your ability, regardless of whether there is a reasonable argument against it out there somewhere).
So you're either a liar or you are ignorant. Which is it?
Edit: Where "popular" means a strong majority. However, I'm speaking totally intuitively. I'm not sure what the reality of the numbers are, and there are so many subtly different opinions one can poll for just be tweaking the wording.
Left wing is a tribe. Right wing is a tribe. Just like all the sportsball teams are tribes.
Politics would work better if politicians, and their followers, worked for people, rather than their tribes.
Can't HN be the one place on the internet that isn't sullied by obvious misspellings?
Fixed it. Just for you. -kiss-
I really haven't seen this with "left wing folks". That sounds more like some folks talking points they want you to buy into.
I think you might be mistaken. Any immigration /= "more mass immigration".
Because the amount matters?
If we talk about the impact of migration the amount certainly plays into what if any impact occurs.
It really seems like you're stuck on a sort of rhetorical talking point phrase.
In other words, "mass" doesn't refer to an amount, but a lack of filtration/selection/etc. Note also that this isn't even an inherently bad thing--there's something noble about wanting America's doors open to everyone: "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...".
Policies and the impact (something that should hopefully inform a policy) are more nuanced than just "mass migration" "more migration" and so on. Your understanding seems entirely disconnected from actual policy.
I can't possibly explain something that is going to be different from person to person or politician to politician, even more so if for you it only ends up being categorized in weird generalities that read like they're someone else's rhetoric skewed talking points / loaded phrases. I don't think you can expect to understand something if you just generalize in that way.
I'm asking "what is your argument?" What argument are you making?
> Policies and the impact (something that should hopefully inform a policy) are more nuanced than just "mass migration" "more migration" and so on.
Of course, and still we speak in shorthand all the time because regurgitating the complete nuance in every single Internet comment is untenable. If "left-wing folks generally support mass immigration" is inaccurate or incomplete, let's talk about that--what nuance am I overlooking?
The only difference today is that after years of taking the votes of reactionaries and doing little, the populist blocs of reactionary voters are the tail wagging the dog.
Even Trump supporting farmers were complaining about not being able to find anyone.
Just like they were all for the wall until the government started using eminent domain to take their land to build it.
It's the same thing with climate change on the left (Democrat politicians never manage to pass any kind of carbon pricing because they know they'd get crucified by business interests), but I wouldn't say that the left-wing broadly opposes carbon pricing.
The left wing does not, and much of it actively supports it.
The Democratic Party-in-government, dominated by its center-right faction, does oppose it, or at least does not actively support it.
There are (outside of small local cooperative enterprises) approximately zero left-wing companies in the US.
The things painted as “left-wing” companies by the far right are center-right neoliberal corporate capitalist enterprises that do some mix of opposing far-right culture war efforts as a drag on corporate capitalist exploitation and making PR gestures to the left side of culture war fights while remaining locked in the economic center-right.
Yeah, in the GOP’s current view of the world, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is considered radical leftists, but, that's not reflective of reality.
Where do you think ideologies come from? One of the most common places is some identifiable group's economic self-interest; neoliberalism is that for the owner class in capitalist society, which is why institutions controlled by that class (especially when they are controlled broadly by that class rather than by an individual member who may have personal quirks) tend to pursue it.
I'm not saying otherwise, I'm observing that in this particular case, mass immigration has a wage suppressing effect which contradicts the "livable wages" goal. Noting the challenge doesn't imply ignobility.
> the right only cares about the rich and themselves
I really don't know what this has to do with the subject.
>only cares about
And the prosperity of their own country. It is "selfish" yes. But a selfishness that extends out to their kin and their neighbors. They recognize the world is an arena of competition for scarce resources and power, and so they fight for their community and country to be as prosperous and powerful as possible, because they know foreign nations will do the same for their own people.
See: "Ideological differences in the expanse of the moral circle" [0], specifically Figure 5: Heatmaps indicating highest moral allocation by ideology [1] for a nice visualization of the difference between the moral allocation of right vs left.
[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12227-0?fbclid=Iw...
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12227-0/figures/5
Increasing the amount of people means more resource usage, but also more chances for innovation and economies of scale.
Much power in Trump's trade war came from the size of the consumer base
No more so than having children and growing the population that way, which is a concept the right generally supports ("family values", "pro life").
> "you are strictly harming not helping your fellow countrymen"
It's not like the right do things to help fellow countrymen; taking away rights ("pro choice"), scorning single mothers instead of helping them and their children, demonizing social welfare users as 'welfare queens', opposing 'free' healthcare, oppising livable wages, remove unions and removing the bargaining power workers would need to have good wages otherwise, worsening education and making it less accessible and more expensive. The society their actions move towards is one where wealthy people live off the back of a working class who grind for money and die when they aren't productive anymore, along with a militarised police force acting to keeps the poors in line, and a 'justice' system which lets the rich away without punishment. And you can see it in action when Texas power fails and Ted Cruz takes his family on holiday, or the needlessly cruel treatment the UK Conservative Party's Department for Work and Pensions does to disabled people.
Nationalism isn't "help fellow citizens", it's "given a region drawn on a map, inside good, outside bad".
It's normal to think your life is more important than other people's. It's weird to live in Texas and think people born 50 miles away in Mexico are inferior but people born 1,000 miles away in New York are the same, and people born 1,100 miles away in Canada are inferior. In some sense thinking "I just happened to be born here and this doesn't give me any special status over people who weren't" is one way of living life as if it's no more valuable than anyone elses.
> "their own country"
Why nationalism though? Why should someone born in a "shithole country" be obliged to try and make it better instead of moving away? What should compel them to care about the lines on a map? What should compel me in the UK to feel more connected to someone in Norther Ireland (part of the UK) than someone in the Republic of Ireland a few miles away (part of Europe)? Or less connected to people in Spain, but more connected to people in Gibraltar (part of the UK, on the far side of Spain), or people in the Falkland Islands (part of the UK, South Argentina)?
> "please post the part of my comment where i said hispanics should be treated as less than"
This bit: "If you wanted to help the global poor sending them American dollars would go a lot further in their own country". You think they are treated better in America than in their home country. You don't think they deserve to go to America and should stay in their home country. How is that not treating them as lesser people, less deserving?
Take a 20 year old America and a 20 year old from imaginary Elbonia. Everyone agrees America is greater than Elbonia. OK, but at age 20 the American contributed literally nothing to the greatness of America, and the Elbonian contributed literally nothing to the corruption and mess of Elbonia. The Elbonian might even live closer to the American border than to the capital of Elbonia. But because lines on a map, the American thinks they deserve the greatness of America and the Elbonian doesn't. The American thinks the Elbonian should take responsibility for fixing Elbonia and the American shouldn't. See the world as one blob of land with only ocean boundaries and people as equals with equal rights, and none of this makes sense.
You don’t see anything wrong with that statement?
BTW, the L1 visa is even worse. The people bought in via that visa are also paid below market rates, and they are not even allowed to change companies on that visa.
My issue is that people love to shit talk about us, and forget there are other visas, like the L1, that are crappier. Worse is, when some lump all of us "H1B? They are probably low paid", and then I and many of my friends chuckle when we look at we are paid.
They know that recent immigrants from poorer countries, do not have the education and English language skills to break into white collar jobs, and will mostly work in low paying jobs for their whole career. The white collar immigrants can break into all these jobs, and that is something that they see as a danger.
I find France, UK and US comportements towards their colonies ('trade partners') unjust.
Having another person spend 15-30 minutes in a high stress situation to deliver you food should be a high cost activity that gets more expensive relative to your income over time. Traditional delivery services only made this cost effective by making food for low cost. The alternative is an economy where wages cannot rise relative to goods.
I'm not naive enough though not to notice that it's all done under the table. Few are paying tax or commercial insurance on their vehicles to do restaurant delivery.
I'm pretty sure doing it legitimately costs a reasonable amount. Doubly so when you aren't just trying to get your food to your customers but also paying a bunch of developers Silicon Valley wages to try to capture the entire market before someone else does.
When my family goes to their homes in a developing country, they have drivers and cooks and maids, because there is a huge supply of poorer people willing and able to do those things for a sufficiently low price for my family.
When they return to the US, they have to do all of that themselves, because there is not a huge supply of poorer people willing and able to do those things for a sufficiently low price.
Same thing applies to being able to shop on a Sunday evening, or get a burrito at 11PM, or 2 day delivery. I like seeing fast food stores closed due to insufficient labor, because that means the people that used to have to do those jobs for menial wages now have a better option.
I've noticed our grocery delivery services doing that, too, giving us prices on items that are higher than they are if you go to the store yourself. We'll stop using them soon. It's bullshit. Delivery costs ought to be transparent.
[EDIT] Oh, and places like pizza joints that already had delivery service are starting to get a lot more aggressive about differentiating delivery vs. pick-up pricing. They've long had a deal or two at a time that's carry-out only, but now it's all the decent deals, and even some deals specify that they'll be less-good if you order delivery. Delivery can easily be 40% more expensive than carry-out, as a result, because they also still charge the delivery fees they all started tacking on a decade or so ago (which are also higher, now) and you still, despite already potentially paying $10+ more than you would have for carry-out, have to tip, because most of that money's not making it to the delivery driver.