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Comment by crikeyjoe | Hacker News Reader

There's no shortage of workers, there's a shortage of workers wanting to work for Amazon.

It's kind of interesting because Amazon has built a reputation for being absolutely ruthless to their workers (not just delivery or warehouse).

You have the notorious NYT article from 2015 (the article mentions this):

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-...

The online perception is that it has only gotten worse. It doesn't take much to find stories on teamblind, twitter, reddit, or even hackernews about hire to fire, stack ranking/pip, and even just general mental abuse.

I mean just read this excerpt from the article about a working needing to go see a dentist about an infected tooth:

> The problem, he said, was that he only had seven hours of unpaid time off but ended up missing 20 hours of work; he had enough paid vacation time to cover the absence, but he said the company did not pull from that separate bank of days because Pagan would have had to apply for vacation time in advance. Pagan said he also had a doctor’s note but was told the company did not need to accept it as an excuse, even though he had been excused from work with a doctor’s note previously. He said he worked for another full week without issue, until he showed up one night for his overnight shift and his badge no longer worked. He was eventually told he had been terminated.

At what point do we simply ask if Amazon leaders have no sense of decency? [1]

[1] https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigation...

Always remember there are many sides to most stories. I have a cousin who works at an Amazon warehouse and loves it, he says it’s the funnest and most rewarding job he has had. He’s in his late 40s and has worked all kinda of jobs. His schedule allows him a lot of work life balance, he knows exactly what is expected of him and advancement is possible and also easy to understand. In fact he said he doesn’t understand the hate aside from lazy people that have no work ethic complaining they are being asked to actually work, and work hard, consistently. If it was as terrible as some articles make it sound, I’d doubt they’d have so many employees.

And he'll think that until one day they can him for missing work due to a health issue.

This is why I find a lack of solidarity between working people to be somewhere between selfish and disgusting.

Exactly, it means nothing to me when some workers say they're ok with their job when I see evidence dozens upon dozens of their coworkers are abused. It means nothing because I have no reason to assume they won't turn back on their employers once they have a conflict as well. It merely signals a lack of solidarity and nothing else.

I find it disgusting that you think you can take someone's few sentence anecdote about their cousin and think that you know better than both of them about what is good for them.

I don't need many sides of a story when there is one damning example of a human needing to see a medical professional then getting fired shortly after because no leader at Amazon took 5 seconds to think if this was compassionate or not.

Why should I give Amazon the benefit of the doubt when they have proven time and time again to be actively hostile and dehumanizing? Maybe we should expect Amazon to not treat their fellow humans as some flesh automaton and just be decent for a change.

I've worked ~5 low skill jobs that meet this description. It is the norm, not the exception. At least in Canada.

Jobs advertised as permanent full-time where they can you on the last day they are allowed to are also very common.

Also, my co-workers at these jobs were 90% lazy slobs who did maybe 25% of the load I would while getting paid the same amount. No amount of write ups would alter their behaviour.

I'm blessed, truly, to have escaped poverty.

It's also short sighted right?

This was a successful worker that missed a few days of work with a medical issue, boom fired. And then we see memos like this lamenting that they can't get enough workers? By not accepting some productivity dips due to human nature, they're shrinking their labor pool both by removing people from it directly and with the sentiment generated by the bad press of their inhumane treatment of workers.

The guy in the parent comments story loved working at amazon too, until he needed his tooth removed and showed up to work one day to learn that his badge no longer worked.

>> It's kind of interesting because Amazon has built a reputation for being absolutely ruthless to their workers (not just delivery or warehouse).

Even if Amazon changed their policies, I'd be cautious about any AMZN managers or directors. The fact that they survived there, or thrived, means they are probably ruthless and I wouldnt want to work with such an individual (or hire them, for that matter.)

I have a friend that works in an Amazon data center and he describes the work environment as “Have you seen any of the hunger games movies?”

When I interviewed for Amazon, they had an online screen that was basically asking which employee should be fired based on the metrics in a table. I'm all for firing bad employees, productivity matters, but it does seem like the culture promotes looking for people to fire.

Like batoru rowaiaru? Or...?

Cause I'm pretty sure that is about the emergent workforce and subjugation of academics into kamikaze roles.

So I assume that's what you mean.

> At what point do we simply ask if Amazon leaders have no sense of decency?

We don't need to ask, we already know. Actions speak louder than words anyway, and we've all seen how they treat all their workers: from warehouse to corporate. One would be a bit naive to think only their warehouse workers get treated badly, corporate workers are slapped around just as much in their own way.

Even in death, Amazon doesn't care and will lie through its teeth: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/17/amazon-wa...

> Billy had lain on the floor for 20 minutes before receiving treatment from Amazon’s internal safety responders.

> Bill was laying there for 20 minutes and nobody nearby saw until an Amnesty worker with a radio came by.

> A couple of days before, he put the wrong product in the wrong bin and within two minutes management saw it on camera and came down to talk to him about it

> “After the incident, everyone was forced to go back to work. No time to decompress. Basically watch a man pass away and then get told to go back to work, everyone, and act like it’s fine,”

> Amazon said it had responded to Foister’s collapse “within minutes”.

Amazon will just keep doing what it's doing because it can. Like you mentioned, online perception has gotten worse ever since that 2015 article, so clearly they just don't care about anything other than profit. Warehouse workers have had enough, they're pushing back by organizing their rights collectively. But so should corporate workers, we shouldn't have to keep watch over our shoulders every time we go to work in fear of PIP, or even at the interview stage where we have to suspect if we're getting "hired to be fired".

It's ridiculous. We should organize too.

Technically 20 is a number of minutes...

But yeah even as a software engineer I'm often torn about wanting to work for Amazon. They have quite a few interesting projects and the pay is solid, but there are a lot of horror stories out there that suggest it is a brutal place to work even for engineers.

One could even say that "they responded in microseconds."

Skip sense of decency this is just downright stupid: a worker with an urgent medical issue needed time off for it. They had accrued leave, but you don't let them take it. They resolve the issue, come back to work and then you fire then anyway...and what, now have to train a new person up? What the hell was gained by any of that?

Not really what the article says - Amazon's enforced-churn policy leads to workers that want to continue working there being fired for no good reason.

You could argue the reason is that they weren’t good enough.

Needing to see a doctor suddenly means you're a poor worker?

For a maximal hypercapitalist corporation? Well, yeah.

For as long as they are (seen as) trivially replaceable, an employee that sees a doctor, or has health concerns, or uses benefits of any kind, or really has any slip in their productivity even to the slightest degree is a poorer worker than one that doesn't.

This stops working if you run out of people to hire, or if the cost of hiring increases past a certain threshold.

It is the most rational way for the dominant corporation in the current economic system to act, if they can get away with it.

> For a maximal hypercapitalist corporation? Well, yeah.

I don't think worker attrition is cost effective. It is just less work and lower skill requirement for the managers to rule by fear and overwork.

Isn't Amazon paying abit higher wages than the competition? They need to pay the bullshit fee to the workers.

Needing to urinate while on shift also makes you a poor worker.

I see bottles of sun tea piled up in various places around town where delivery trucks pause for red lights.

Those are good workers, committed to the job.

Did I say that? No.

That’s quite the conclusion to jump to. I was mere pointing out that maybe some of the churn is justifiable? Most companies have churn, but everyone wants to point fingers at Amazon for what are otherwise normal and accepted business practices.

Can you please justify the "churn" stated in the article about a worker needing to see a medical professional due to an infected tooth, then shortly getting fired one week after the event automatically with zero conversations between him and his superior?

Mind you this is a worker that was meeting all the bullshit metrics Amazon foisted upon him. His only mistake was being human and needing to see a dentist.

I should ask you this yourself, do you have any decency?

YesI have plenty of decency. I take it you don’t own a business nor work in management. And probably think rules don’t apply to you. You might want to reread the thread, otherwise i think your reading comprehension is low. My original comment was in response to a comment mentioning more than a single worker, but thanks for playing.

>" You could argue the reason is that they weren’t good enough. "

This is a valid possibility. However, companies that enforce churn through up-or-out and stack ranking tend to end up treating employees ruthlessly in order to satisfy the system. There are no shortage of stories where managers and individuals backstab and sabotage each other so that they aren't automatically fired as part of the culling process. There are plenty of 'just fine' employees out there, yet companies like Amazon act like everyone needs to be above average.

The workers are always good enough though. This comment doesn't make any sense.

Just have to reply to recruiters saying you don't want to work for a company with forced attrition and they shut up.

They don't try to correct me and say they aren't doing it anymore, they just cease communication.

Makes you wonder why they still do such barbaric practices as forced attrition

There's a surplus of management eager to exploit workers.

> There's a surplus of management eager to exploit workers.

Can also be written "There's a surplus of customer eager to pay the lowest possible price even if that means exploiting workers."

As shown by the success of Chinese super low cost brands wether we are talking electronics, fashion etc.

Have you considered that those customers and workers are mostly the same people?

There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. See: https://www.workers.org/2021/12/60560/

Exactly—it's entirely infeasible to live in the modern world and keep up with every step of the supply chain for every product and service you use, even if the information were readily available, which it very much is not. It's not even close to being possible.

That's what laws setting floors on how shitty product-safety/work-conditions/worker-pay/et c. can get, are for. Doesn't work so hot in a world where we grant MFN (or whatever it's called now) trade status to authoritarian states with weak worker, consumer, and environmental protections, though.

> and keep up with every step of the supply chain for every product and service you use

So okay. The onus is never on the individual. It's on the collective. Businesses owe us. Business owners owe us.

They can pay or they can burn.

That is the deal.

True. Same can be said of unions.

Unions were supposed to protect workers, at least in theory, but they were more than happy to off-shore manufacturing and allow layoffs in the US --as long as they got to keep their union boss jobs. Cesar Chavez understood this. This is why he did not want just anybody to be able to work in the fields.

It's all related. You wanna pay less by offshoring labor? You got it! But one day that off-shoring is going to come get you and your job will evaporate and you will be happy with service sector jobs. And don't complain, you didn't want to pay $70 for a shirt and instead went to buy a $20 shirt and "saved" money but "sold" your job or the underemployed person's job now driving a clunker.

> "There's a surplus of customer eager to pay the lowest possible price even if that means exploiting workers."

This is just wrong. First, Amazon’s prices and their wages for warehouse workers aren’t directly connected. If they were, amazon wouldn’t have posted 200B in profit in 2021. Given the 1.6mil employees, that’s $125k per employee of profit. Amazon could pay MUCH more, and still hold the same prices.

Second, the hunger for cheap stuff is driven at least in part BY LOW WAGES. If you’re making minimum wage - you’re going to buy the cheapest things you can find.

edit: i'm getting beat up in the comments because I used gross profits rather than $YOUR_FAV_PROFIT_METRIC

I stand by using that number. If you think I am actually suggesting they distribute 100% of their profits to every employee you're straw-manning my point. I'm suggesting cutting a slice off profits, exec pay, and stock grants, and giving that to the lowest paid employees - since the company would not make that money without their labor.

It's simple, just apply modern capitalism. In this case the rule is: Ford was a genius for realizing his workers need to make enough to buy his product. Anyone else who makes that realization is a dirty commie.

>Ford was a genius for realizing his workers need to make enough to buy his product

In what world does it make sense to pay your workers $20k (or whatever), so they can spend $20k on products that your company makes? Factoring in margins you need each dollar paid to your workers to generate $6.66 dollars worth of sales for you for it to break even.

> In what world does it make sense to pay your workers $20k (or whatever), so they can spend $20k on products that your company makes?

A world where you're raising the floor so that everyone else's workers can also spend on the products your company makes.

...except that won't happen because supply/demand drives prices, not the inflated wages that you're paying. Your competitors will continue to pay their workers the usual wages, and laugh all the way to the bank with the extra money that they're not spending on wages, or undercut your prices.

Supply and demand also applies to the labour market. If you pay more, the best people want to work for you and you can hire the best people. Humans are not fungible, no matter how much businesses try to treat them that way.

>Supply and demand also applies to the labour market

Right, but for wages (ie. prices) to go up, you need to decrease supply or increase demand. Increasing the prices you pay doesn't do that.

Supply and demand can "solve" for the price for an HD TV. It can't solve the problem of "do I need an HD TV or a 4K TV?".

Cars are this big advertising moving billboard. Car companies employee thousands who work in cities built around these plants. Having employees driving around earning high paying wages spending it around town has a big influence on the rest of the town/region.

seems tenuous and hard to objectify. You could also use the same argument to say that raining $5 bills from your company offices has net positive value, eg.

1. dump a sack of $5 bills from your office

2. people associate your company with giving them free stuff, thereby giving you positive influence

3. ???

4. profit

It can but each situation requires a multiplier. A $10,000 cash drop as a media story picked up nationally or regionally will be worth more.

In Ford's case he doubled the daily pay to 5 dollars but this also provided a steady workforce so it had other benefits because a steady workforce means a trained and more productive workforce.

A significant portion of Amazon profits comes from AWS. If you remove AWS from the equation, AWS does make money, but not the truckloads you are pointing. And AWS profits are in now way linked to amazon warehouse workers salaries.

If Amazon increases wages - and thus prices - what do you think will happen:

1. People will still buy amazon because they have a higher wage so they ca afford it

2. People will buy more stuff from another store that provides cheaper prices while exploiting Chinese workers instead of American ones.

Of course it's 2.

Again, you’re simply wrong.

https://www.shacknews.com/article/128660/amazon-amzn-aws-rev...

17.78B in 2021, or $11k per employee.

That’s less than 10% of the per employee profit.

Amazon can increase wages without raising prices.

The numbers you are using are wrong, and that article is sloppily written. Revenue and profit (net income) are not the same thing.

Redo the math with the correct numbers:

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/net-in...

And note that Walmart/Target/Home Depot/ and all the other retail public companies have profit margins of low single digits. It is safe to assume Amazon has the same low single digit profit margins from its retail operations.

EBITDA is 60 bn from 470 bn revenue. Net income is 33 bn USD.

They couldn't spend 125k per worker.

Did i say they could "spend" that? No. I said:

> that’s $125k per employee of profit

And it is. Gross profit.

I could use one of your numbers, $33B net income, or $60B EBITDA. But using those number accepts the premise that all of that money was allocated correctly, and it's just the 33B left over that is free to be distributed.

AMZN did not have $200B profit in 2021.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/net-in...

Amazon annual gross profit for 2021 was $197.478B, a 29.28% increase from 2020.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/gross-...

There is no reason to ignore fixed costs (aka using “gross profit”) for the purpose of calculating how much extra cash a company could be paying its employees. Net income (aka profit) is the extra cash flow that could have been spent.

> Net income (aka profit) is the extra cash flow that could have been spent.

It's possible gross profit is the wrong metric, but the premise that net income is the right metric isn't something I accept. Net income is the money left over after it's been allocated out as the company has chosen. i.e. all the salaries have been paid, stock grants have been made, buildings and utilities are all paid, stock buybacks have been allocated, etc

If they allocated a little less to exec pay, and a little more to warehouse worker pay, I don't even think they'd need to cut into the 33B they have leftover.

But EVEN if we accept the compensation amazon has and only allow ourselves to play with net income - 33B is STILL $20k per employee. Do you know how life-changing $5k/year is when you're making 29k/year? That still leaves 15K of profit per employee (or 25B) that can go to people who didn't work for it.

Net income is all the money left after all the expenses are paid. Stock buybacks have no impact on net income (they are part of the cash flow statement, not the income statement). Excluding all the things you said to get to the metric you like means Amazon can function without executives, software developers (no stock grant expenses), warehouses (no buildings and utilities expenses).... Which is plainly not true.

Yes, I agree, your straw-man is plainly false. Amazon does need executives, software developers, and warehouses.

Amazon is a functioning + profitable business. If it can't continue to be a functioning + profitable business if it pays every employee a good wage, it doesn't deserve to exist anymore - it needs to die to make room for a business that CAN do that. But I don't actually think that amazon has to exploit its workers in order to stay profitable, and I think the numbers (at very least the 33B in net profits) back me up.

You are welcome to start your own Amazon competitor with however much profit you would like.

If you are willing to accept less profit than Amazon, then you should be able to steal customers and employees by offering lower prices and better quality of life at work.

Same goes for Walmart/Target/any other retail business.

Maybe all the execs at these established retail businesses working for decades know what they are doing. Or maybe people posting on the internet know how they could be running the business better and delivering goods and services at lower prices and paying workers more.

If I were a betting man, I would bet that you would soon find profit margins are about as low as they can get for retail businesses and the competition very stiff.

> I think the numbers (at very least the 33B in net profits) back me up.

That profit is coming from AWS, Amazon video, and from the commission they collect from 3rd party sellers, not their retail operations.

By the way, I am all for better labor laws and higher quality of life at work laws. I just do not see the point of criticizing individual businesses, especially those running at low profit margins with no moat. They are obviously in cutthroat competition already, otherwise the profit margins would be higher.

The point of my criticism is to show that we can do better without losing same day delivery. These companies are exploitive, and the more people who see that the more likely it is to change in one of three ways:

Through public pressure. I don’t buy from amazon anymore because of this.

Through government action. But given how partisan politics in the usa are, i wouldn’t hold my breath.

Through action from workers. Unionization and work stoppages. I think this is the most likely and the most healthy option for our society.

If you want to be a bystander while people’s lives get chewed up and spat out so a few people can get rich, that’s on your conscience.

Doesn't "profit" of any kind have stuff subtracted out?

Yes it does:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/grossprofit.asp

Sales commissions, direct labor that varies with output, to name a few.

I appreciate that you provided your favorite metric, but gross profit is affected by wages, so it is on point as far as I'm concerned.

No idea where you are getting your numbers, but Amazon did not post $200B in profit in 2021. The list of top five annual profit (adjusted to current USD) by any company ever is:

1. Saudi Aramco (2018) - $120B 2. Saudi Aramco (2021) - $115B 3. Vodafone (2014) - $113B 4. Fannie Mae (2013) - $98B 5. Apple (2021) - $95B

Perhaps you are thinking about revenue?

> Amazon annual gross profit for 2021 was $197.478B, a 29.28% increase from 2020.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/gross-...

Gross profits.

Gross profit is not profit.

And the comment said "profit" not gross profit.

Hello Kenny - some clarification seems to be needed re: some financial metrics. 1. Gross profit = revenue - COGS 2. COGS = price paid to manufacturer + transportation costs from manufacturer to the warehouse and from warehouse to customer

COGS does not include warehouse rent and utilities - these are operating expenses.

Hopefully this makes it clear that my reply to your other comment was in good faith and not a straw man. The metric you proposed is not a good metric. Amazon cannot function if Gross profit is 0 --- because it would not be able to pay for the rest of the stuff it needs to function: executives, software developers, warehouses. Saying all the expenses not included in COGS are discretionary is just not true - some of theses expenses are essential.

> Amazon’s prices and their wages for warehouse workers aren’t directly connected

If you can say that, then you can say that Amazon’s prices and the taxes it pays on its revenues aren't directly connected.

I would say that. Raise taxes on corporations. Trickle-down economics is and always has been a lie.

Its a shortage at a given salary. Up the salary and the shortage is not present. So really it is self imposed.

Working at an Amazon warehouse sounds terrible in every way, but… did you see those spiral package slides in the background? Might give up my sweet tech job just to ride on those.

There are only 9 employers on planet earth with more employees than Amazon.

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