Amazon fears it will run out of workers in the US due to very high churn

[ch33zw1z]

I disagree that it cannot be like that now. I know many families that are one earner households. Of course they aren't packing 1000 dollar cell phones and such, but they are doing just fine.

I didn't say it cannot be like that. Dont really care about their phones either.

The classic single earner household has been decreasing for decades.

 

[pcgeek11]

I didn't say it cannot be like that. Dont really care about their phones either.

The classic single earner household has been decreasing for decades.

I didn't say it wasn't.

 

[NWRMidnight]

I'll get to the rest of it later, because I'm not really committed to my 'thesis', it's just a thought I've wondered about, and you might have a convincing alternative explanation. But this bit here I don't find exactly conclusive. When something was 'invented' has little to do with when it became widely available as a mass-market consumer product, and those dates you give are perfectly consistent with my suggested theory. It takes time for material changes to change behaviours. There were a large number of material inventions that gradually reduced the need for full-time labour to maintain the domestic sphere, over the course of the 20th century. Again, though, I'm not really wedded to this theory, it might not be the explanation for what's happened.




I don't really understand this part. I meant 'as a proportion of the population'. As in the '50s or before, most women didn't have paid employment outside the home, how can it be that the available workforce is now only 10% larger than then? By making paid employment the norm for women, has that not doubled the available workforce? If it's only gone up by 10%, where has the rest of it gone?

More students (due to a longer duration of education now required)? Earlier retirement? Or, very possibly, I am just underestimating the number of women who _did_ have paid employment, even in earlier eras? (Black and working-class women have always worked, as has been pointed out a few times to earlier generations of white feminists...but then maybe one could argue the effect of the devaluing of labour is only on the slightly-better-off classes, i.e middle-class white families?)




OK, you have actual figures here, which do seem to support your argument. But I'm puzzled by those figures. As you say, it does depend very much on how one defines a 'job'.

Actually to my surprise, 47% of women worked in the 50's.. that number increased due to demand. The main point though is in the 50's, they didn't have to work, unlike today where they have to (two income household) just to have the same standard of living 1 income provided in the 50's.

 

[ch33zw1z]

I didn't say it wasn't.

Thanks for the anecdotes then? Weirdo.

 

[pmv]

Why would churn cause them to run out of workers? Once they've worked their way through the entire US labour force, couldn't they just go back and start again at the beginning?

 

[dank69]

Wait...I thought $15/hour was the gold standard for minimum wage? No?

Gold standard? No. Bare minimum if we let wages keep up with productivity the way we did before rubes like you bought into the trickle-down myth.

 

[dank69]

I disagree that it cannot be like that now. I know many families that are one earner households. Of course they aren't packing 1000 dollar cell phones and such, but they are doing just fine.

Whoa $1000 for a hand held computer that does more than a $2000 desktop did 10 years ago. Madness.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Whoa $1000 for a hand held computer that does more than a $2000 desktop did 10 years ago. Madness.

It's a weird thing to get hung up on. Like it somehow changes the numbers.

 

[senseamp]

Amazon has a crappy reputation as a tech employer too. Mandatory stack ranking and "untegretted attrition" targets for engineers. All sorts of crazy office politics like "hire to fire" , where managers pick up new workers as ballast to drop at next review cycle to protect their core team from mandatory firing quota. All sorts of horror stories about young engineer careers damaged by this, where they are given unrealistic targets with no time or support to get up to speed. I would avoid if at all possible.

 

[K1052]

Amazon has a crappy reputation as a tech employer too. Mandatory stack ranking and "untegretted attrition" targets for engineers. All sorts of crazy office politics like "hire to fire" , where managers pick up new workers as ballast to drop at next review cycle to protect their core team from mandatory firing quota. All sorts of horror stories about young engineer careers damaged by this, where they are given unrealistic targets with no time or support to get up to speed. I would avoid if at all possible.

What I've heard from engineers who went to work for them wasn't good, worse than the other big tech cos. Most left within a year or two.

 

[vi edit]

Amazon has a crappy reputation as a tech employer too. Mandatory stack ranking and "untegretted attrition" targets for engineers. All sorts of crazy office politics like "hire to fire" , where managers pick up new workers as ballast to drop at next review cycle to protect their core team from mandatory firing quota. All sorts of horror stories about young engineer careers damaged by this, where they are given unrealistic targets with no time or support to get up to speed. I would avoid if at all possible.

There's a number of fortune 500 companies that operate that way. Churn is a way of culture. They target a 10% turnover to get rid of low performers. Which is really a fucking stupid policy. But I digress, drink the Koolaid or GTFO.

 

[senseamp]

There's a number of fortune 500 companies that operate that way. Churn is a way of culture. They target a 10% turnover to get rid of low performers. Which is really a fucking stupid policy. But I digress, drink the Koolaid or GTFO.

It's been tried in tech by the likes of Microsoft and largely abandoned because it encourages toxic politics and backstabbing over collaboration that you need on complex projects. Also, top engineers have so many options now, that it's hard to keep them if you have a reputation for such corporate culture.

 

[blackangst1]

Gold standard? No. Bare minimum if we let wages keep up with productivity the way we did before rubes like you bought into the trickle-down myth.

You provide proof I bought the trickle down myth and Ill paypal you $1000. I wont hold my breath though.

 

[pcgeek11]

Thanks for the anecdotes then? Weirdo.

Sure thing Fruitcake.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Sure thing Fruitcake.

Nothing says intelligence like ignoring the topic for some good old fashioned yelling at clouds

 

[zinfamous]

No, they were making money on retailing side as well. Just not high margin, high profit like AWS. Amazon was cash flow positive most years. But instead of reporting profit and paying taxes, Bezos elected to invest and grow the company by building their warehouse and logistics business. Bezos only cared about maximum growth over profit because it was race against time. It was land grab strategy. AWS came later and what really propelled Amazon profit and advanced the stock price.

The reason this lesson sticks with me was because I heard the same story being repeated about Tesla. About how Tesla makes no money and loses more money for every car they make and sell. And at first, like a dummy, I believed them as well. Until I remembered my lesson from Amazon. So I researched Tesla and found that wasn't true and Tesla was also cashflow positive just like Amazon was in early years. That's when everything clicked for me. Like Bezos, Musk was plowing all the money into faster growth and expansion. It was land grab strategy with Tesla as well. So I went back and compared Amazon and Tesla growth rates when they were similar size company and similar time on the market. I found Tesla was growing much faster than Amazon ever did under similar circumstances. And just like Amazon goal was to prioritize growth over profit, it's the same with Tesla.

IIRC, it's illegal to report improper financials. Amazon was famously in the red for something like, 15 straight years. Stock price at the time has nothing to do with the fact that they hadn't profited for the first decade or so of their existence.

If you can show me that they actually weren't (and still aren't) losing money on retail, I'd be glad to see it. Publicly, and so as I think in the necessity to avoid fraud, they were very much losing cash every single year. Prime is still a money loser for them.

 

[pmv]

IIRC, it's illegal to report improper financials. Amazon was famously in the red for something like, 15 straight years. Stock price at the time has nothing to do with the fact that they hadn't profited for the first decade or so of their existence.

If you can show me that they actually weren't (and still aren't) losing money on retail, I'd be glad to see it. Publicly, and so as I think in the necessity to avoid fraud, they were very much losing cash every single year. Prime is still a money loser for them.

That's a weird feature of the contemporary world that I don't really understand. "Gig economy" businesses like Uber, I gather are also constantly losing money. How does this work? There are all these new businesses who seem to exist to lose money while driving the competition out of business (and having massive effects on the circumstances of everyone, cf AirBnB and its effect on housing markets and local communities in popular destinations). When did the logic of capitalism change, such that businesses no longer needed to actually make profits?

 

[pmv]

Is it that the distribution of wealth has become so skewed that the super-wealthy are now into a stage where they just expend money in order to remould the world to their liking? It feels in many ways as if we are into some sort of 'stage two' of neo-liberalism. As with the changes in voting patterns we see in things like the decline of the 'Red wall' (or the 'rust belt' in the US?). They've completed phase one - destroyed the organised working class, along with the industrial jobs that maintained it - now they are making use of the fragmented atomised class that has replaced it (which seems to only have some sort of idea of ethnicity and culture to cling to as a source of identity and status), in order to extend their power still further.

 

[ponyo]

IIRC, it's illegal to report improper financials. Amazon was famously in the red for something like, 15 straight years. Stock price at the time has nothing to do with the fact that they hadn't profited for the first decade or so of their existence.

If you can show me that they actually weren't (and still aren't) losing money on retail, I'd be glad to see it. Publicly, and so as I think in the necessity to avoid fraud, they were very much losing cash every single year. Prime is still a money loser for them.

Again, you're focusing on the wrong metrics. Amazon wasn't losing money on retail evidenced by their positive free cash flow. Far from it. Amazon turned over their inventory super quick. Faster than what was needed to pay their suppliers. That's super important. In essence, Amazon suppliers were floating cash Amazon needed to operate their retail business without Amazon having to use their own.

Free cash flow is the most important metric. Not earnings per share or earnings growth. Amazon quarterly earnings were what stupid Wall Street analysts focused on. While it's important, it's short sighted and not important as free cash flow. Earnings can be manipulated with accounting tricks. You can have negative earnings when you actually have positive earnings through accounting tricks. Free cash flow determines the success of the business, and business with positive free cash flow will not go out of business. Amazon pretty much always made money on retail side of business with their quick inventory turnover. They plowed that free cash flow from retail business into building their infrastructure, warehouses, and other capital investments so they could rapidly grow rather than pay taxes.

Like I said, it's the same strategy Elon Musk is using at Tesla and why Tesla will continue to report minimal earnings. Musk has said publicly that it's goal of Tesla not to show much earnings while they grow their business 50% YOY for the next couple of years. Tesla just like Amazon turns over their inventory super fast and car inventory at hand is like 2 weeks. Tesla normally produces, sells, and delivers their cars to customers before they have to pay their suppliers. Their suppliers are in fact floating cash for Tesla just like suppliers for Amazon floated cash for Amazon because they turned over the inventory so fast.

Here's Amazon 2004 annual report. Read what Jeff Bezos says about free cash flow.

https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/annual/2004_Annual_report.pdf

Here's 2009 annual report. Notice, Bezos talks about free cash flow and doesn't mention earnings.

https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/annual/AMZN_Annual-Report-2009-(final).pdf

Remember this lesson. Free cash flow > all.

 

[thilanliyan]

When did the logic of capitalism change, such that businesses no longer needed to actually make profits?

I think the idea is they will make money....eventually. Uber for example once they have self driving cars and no longer need the drivers taking their profits. Whether that will work I have no idea.

 

[pmv]

I think the idea is they will make money....eventually. Uber for example once they have self driving cars and no longer need the drivers taking their profits. Whether that will work I have no idea.

Is it possible though, that the fact they can defer the 'actually making a profit' stage nearly indefinitely, is because there is now so much accumulated wealth in the pockets of the 1%, that the way the system works has changed? No idea if there's any basis for that hypothesis - it's just a spur-of-the-moment thought.

 

[obidamnkenobi]

Expect this is their solution.

Automated storage and retrieval system - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[thilanliyan]

Is it possible though, that the fact they can defer the 'actually making a profit' stage nearly indefinitely, is because there is now so much accumulated wealth in the pockets of the 1%, that the way the system works has changed? No idea if there's any basis for that hypothesis - it's just a spur-of-the-moment thought.

I don't think this model applies across the board. It's think it's mostly "high tech" companies in newish industries. A company like Amazon can (EDIT: hypothetically) lose money on its retail/entertainment sides because it has other areas that are profitable.

Maybe there's just an abundance of unutilized capital from investors that they are willing to gamble on "unprofitable" companies. I don't know if that capital is coming only from the 1% however.

 

[ponyo]

I don't think this model applies across the board. It's think it's mostly "high tech" companies in newish industries. A company like Amazon can lose money on its retail/entertainment sides because it has other areas that are profitable.

Maybe there's just an abundance of unutilized capital from investors that they are willing to gamble on "unprofitable" companies. I don't know if that capital is coming only from the 1% however.

See, this is kind of false info that still exist about Amazon. Amazon has been cash free positive since 2002. They have and continue to make money on retail side. Look at how much money Amazon actually borrowed over the years for their massive expansion and growth. Not much at all compared to their current massive size. Most of this was financed by cash flow from their retail business. Amazon chose to smartly invest in their business and growth instead over showing earnings and paying taxes on that profit. This was calculated move by Jeff Bezos.

But this shows you the power of FUD and how media and others can spin the headlines and have people believe anything they want.

 

[woolfe9998]

That's a weird feature of the contemporary world that I don't really understand. "Gig economy" businesses like Uber, I gather are also constantly losing money. How does this work? There are all these new businesses who seem to exist to lose money while driving the competition out of business (and having massive effects on the circumstances of everyone, cf AirBnB and its effect on housing markets and local communities in popular destinations). When did the logic of capitalism change, such that businesses no longer needed to actually make profits?

Amazon's last quarterly showed $8.1 billion net profits for Q1 2021, up from $4 billion Q1 2020. They are one of the most profitable companies in the world.