No biggie, I still remember when Amazon was just a bookstore, and everyone got groceries and supplies at their nearest retail outlet(s).
I'd be fascinated to be in some of the operations/SRE rooms at AWS. There should be some interesting content from engineering blogs this year.
The good news is Wal-Mart's model relies on their existing stores, not fulfillment centers. Wal-mart's delivery times are still fairly short.
I'm also impressed with how much cheaper Walmart is than Amazon for a large number of the things I just ordered.
We need an aggregator that compares prices between Amazon, Walmart, Target, etc. for the same or similar SKUs. It'd be even better if you could build your cart with it and then it put together the relevant orders with each service. (This maybe already exists, I just haven't searched for it.)
> Multiple items I’ve ordered this weekend with April 21 or later delivery dates got their dates moved up by 3+ weeks after order.
I can tell you that, as a seller, we’ve been seeing 2-3 additional days for delivery vs. normal. There’s not really a reason I can think of that delivery dates would suddenly get delayed by an additional 3-4 weeks. Delivery times should degrade gradually as demand ramps up. My personal hunch is that Amazon is setting expectations super low (or there’s a big!).
I am, however, of the mind that some China reliant items might be sometime (from any supplier, not just Amazon). It now seems impossible to find a bread maker for instance in the UK and there is no company seemingly expecting any stock anytime soon.
(I know this doesn't address your larger point, but maybe it helps you make bread without a bread maker, so I feel like it's worth mentioning anyway.)
Amazon isn't run by robots. There are real humans who are going through hell to support this increase in demand.
Amazon has always exploited its labor force; that's why they are in the position to dial things up as needed to meet demand surges.
That woke academics see physical labor as hell says a lot about them, and about the disconnect between these entirely separate communities.
Consider that business isn't charity.
If Amazon made a promise to deliver in 2 days, and I'm paying for that benefit, doesn't that mean I have the right to demand that benefit or be compensated? Does a pandemic mean that Amazon has the right to profit at my expense?
Isn't it a bit self-centered to say "Well, I can afford to toss money away on Prime membership without reaping the benefits, therefore anyone can"? What about those who rely on Prime membership and use it heavily but aren't rich enough to waste money on a service that isn't provided?
Now if normal delivery endangers the health and lives of deliverymen, then would it not make sense to ask for compensation from Amazon?
It's dehumanizing.
Or is it maybe all employment work?
[I'm only 1/4 sarcastic and 3/4 actually curious.]
We can’t switch jobs or start a business because our health and well being is tied up with an employer. It’s possible that switching jobs means switching doctors or foregoing care.
And I’d say that the worst part about employers subsidizing healthcare is that they gladly do it because it’s essentially untaxed salary.
If my employer wasn’t allowed to subsidize healthcare, they’d have to pay me more and that extra pay would be subject to payroll tax.
So the whole system incentivizes employers to lobby for this terrible system of employer-based private for-profit health insurance. Big companies love it because it’s a way in which they can trap employees and snuff out competition from smaller businesses.
It’s also better for society that the congregations of people shift from many geographically scattered and difficult-to-monitor locations to a few single operations like Amazon warehouses that can be very closely monitored and screened for COVID19. Amazon’s warehouses can be more cheaply monitored and supplied with PPE than all of society can.
This should probably be part of SOP for responding to outbreaks like this.
[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/22/21189881/apple-donating-m...
They could also theoretically provide adequate bathroom breaks for their workers.
Previous history hints at what we will see.
On a more serious note, I wonder if there are scenarios where asymptomatic carriers can contaminate packages sent to many geographically diverse locations?
Theoretically yeah, but practically Amazon is driven by people with short-term profits in mind, so you don't see this happening. In the ideal world, capitalists realizes that if their customers / workforce goes out of jobs because of sickness, they won't earn as much. But seems that's too much future thinking, so business are trying to extract as much value they can before they'll be forced to shut down.
Jeff Bezos' letter to shareholders, 1997:
It's All About the Long Term
Because of our emphasis on the long term, we may make decisions and weigh tradeoffs differently than some companies... We will continue to make investment decisions in light of long-term market leadership considerations rather than short-term profitability considerations or short-term Wall Street reactions.
https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/amazons-original-1...
> Hey Joe, does your company emphasis on the long term or short-term profitability?
> Joe: What a good question! We at ACME AB of course favor long-term sustainability rather than short-term profitability
> How about letting your warehouse workers go to the bathroom whenever they want?
> Joe: well, our long-term plan depends on short-term profitability so of course people can't go to the bathroom whenever they want, they should have a allocated slot for that.
Point being: look at the actions of a company rather than the words of the owners/workers, and you'll get a much more real picture.
Hint: Not all, or even most, companies "participating for-profit culture of capitalism" are publicly traded and answerable to shareholders.
SPOILER ALERT!!
I caught the episode where they detail how every act you perform in modern life has so many negative consequences and repercussions that everyone on Earth has, for centuries, wound up going to Hell.
It haunts me because it's true.
(Not the going-to-hell bit, the part about how things are so interconnected and so fucked up that you can't wipe your ass without damaging the environment, and that's even before you get to the luxury phones made by de facto slave labor.)
"There's got to be a better way!"
The problem is that nothing is fair or perfect, and any system that tried becomes far more unfair and restrictive in practice.
I mean, sure, some people love to pretend that they really care, but none of them sacrifice their own benefits, instead choosing, like me, to sacrifice the benefits of other people.
There's no dilemma once I've chosen a position. The dilemma is having to choose if you want to sacrifice your benefits, by for example not buying a smartphone, or the benefits of other people, by supporting the exploitation of other people through your purchasing power.
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IZDmzk...
Yes, generally we do just silently accept these things. You're typing this on a PC or phone built using slave labor using minerals extracted by warlords to fund campaigns of oppression (despite some companies paying lip service to these issues it really still affects all electronic devices). When you are finished with them, they will be sent to Africa and burned in open landfills by hand to extract valuable minerals. Our oil market is based on dictators extracting their nation's wealth and using it to fund terror, in some cases literally on us.
Nobody in the modern world walks away from Omelas.
Let's grant this point. It's arguable, but I generally support it.
Another route is to use the very tools that are produced by these processes to subvert and upend those processes. For example, your comment is one such method of getting started by raising awareness and possibly redirecting behavior.
The same thing could be writ large: a tool like Twitter, for example, enables mass demonstration and a certain sort of transparency that was harder to establish prior to its creation.
We sometimes hear and say that X is not inherently moral or immoral, just how it's used. While I think that's probably not true, in many cases, the seeds of redemption can bloom from the soils of corruption. If we are inextricably enmeshed in a corrupt society and world, it seems then that the moral choice is how to subvert that corruption with its own fruit.
I grew up in America, and decided to go to Southwest Asia for a while. Seeing small children work is gut wrenching and something I had never seen or thought about till I saw it on my own personally. And it has certainly made me wary and selective about hiring any sort of service, even at the expense of my own convenience.
Bottom line is empathy.
Your question assumes a frame of atomized individual decision making, and forgoes the possibility of changing our political economy so that children don’t have to work.
This is easily doable from a production standpoint (i.e., we could all still have enough if children did not have to work, perhaps Bezos would have to give up a little).
That we don’t do this is an entirely political decision.
The question isn't "why are some people poor", it's "why are some people rich". Human beings are born poor. We receive or make (or steal) whatever we have.
[0] Obviously, I am discounting political corruption that might keep wages artificially low.
So I'd say not everyone is "pretending to really care".
If the pretense is important for you, that's fine. You can keep pretending that you haven't made the same choice as me, if it makes you happy. But your actions speak louder than your words.
With limited resources there's always going to be a struggle to gain more benefits than other people. Few people willing kill themselves to benefit others, but lots of people willingly kill other people to benefit themselves. That's just human nature and the root of the problem. If you'd forfeit your own life in a kill or be killed situation your position would at least be consistent, albeit really stupid. But no one really is like that, everyone just loves to pretend that they are good people, which I don't even take issue with. I'm just openly admitting to my human nature.
Post with your real name then. I dare you.
(I know a bunch of people at Amazon Robotics. Without the robots many more people would need to be contacting each other)
In my opinion, Amazon is doing an incredible job of adapting to a radical increase in demand. I don't know what their volume spike is, but it must be huge and the only effect is slow shipping in some non-essential items.
They've really built an incredible infrastructure. (I don't work for them, I don't own any of their stock.)