• orclev@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    Quality programmers are a finite resource. Amazon chewed through the entire unskilled labor market with their warehouses and then struggled to find employees to meet their labor needs. If they try the same stunt with skilled labor they’re in for a very rude awakening. They’ll be able to find people, but only for well above market rates. They’re highly likely to find in the long run it would have been much cheaper to hang onto the people they already had.

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      Problem is for a company like Amazon, even if the brain drain will result in obviously inferior customer experience, it could take years before that happens and for it to be recognized and for the business results suffer for it. In the meantime, bigger margins and restricted stock matures and they can get their money now.

      Particularly with business clients, like AWS customers, it will take a huge amount of obvious screwups before those clients are willing to undertake the active effort of leaving.

    • omarfw@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      The whole problem with companies like Amazon is that hardly anyone in charge of them seems to care about long term sustainability. They all just invest enough effort to squeeze out some short term profits, earn their bonuses and then leave for another company to do it all again. Nobody is interested in sustainability because there is no incentive to. They’re playing hot potato with the collapse of the company.

      • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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        51 minutes ago

        Now expand that to the entire planetary economy. Unsustainable short term gains is the entire industrial revolution.

        We’re only 300 years in and most life and ecosystems on Earth have been destroyed and homogenized to service humanity. We’re essentially a parasite. It’s not surprising that the most successful corporations are the most successful parasites. It’s just parasites, doing parasitic things, because they’re parasites… from the top down.

    • greenskye
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      10 hours ago

      That’s the next executive’s problem. These executives will jump ship with their golden parachutes before any of that affects them.

      • Jrockwar@feddit.uk
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        9 hours ago

        Well then bring it on. If feels too big to fail, but if (hypothetically) Amazon were to go under, the world would be a better place.

    • 0x0@programming.dev
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      8 hours ago

      in the long run

      That’s a foreign concept for management, they only see one quarter at a time.

      • jj4211@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        No, they see further than that. Sometimes their restricted stock takes a whole year to be released!

    • Sinuhe@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      An awakening would mean they would analyze and understand the situation. They won’t. Amazon has and probably always had a bullish “my way or the highway” attitude - ask people what they think, pretend you care, then ignore everything they might say. Upper managers make decisions uniquely based off costs and short term vision, and are never held accountable for the consequences. I worked there for years and you really can’t imagine how bad the work culture is there, whatever you have in mind is worse in reality