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Yes, people make mistakes and then learn from them. Sometimes not every scenario can be anticipated. In this instance a bunch of startups got caught in this mess and 250k won't be enough for them to survive/meet their employees' payroll. I appreciate the govt stepping in and hopefully rewriting the rules based on the learnings.


I assume apple can tell it's users that they cannot guarantee security of apps they download from another app store similar to how they do with the recent privacy changes? When someone like tik tok or fb realizes that their downloads are reducing significantly they'll still offer it from the apple app store.


> Until recently people simply were not aware that personally identifiable location data was gathered on

Is this right? For a long time now, every time I visit a restaurant I get a notification from Google suggesting that I should write a review. That should be sufficient to raise the alarm bells for even non-tech folks no?


My parents visited USA for the first time when I started working at Amazon a decade ago. They saw an Amazon fresh truck outside my condo building one of the days. That night my Mom told my sister that I work for some company that delivers groceries.

I'm from India and what she really said was "iski company sabzi delivery karti hai". There's a lot of cultural baggage in that statement but they sounded worried about my future :)


My parents are from India as well. They are not the best when it comes to tech and gadgets. My Dad was super excited when he learned to share memes with me on WhatsApp. Before pandemic they were visiting me in US and I invited a very close friend of mine who works for Uber to hangout with us. He stayed for a week and it was fun for me to watch him describe his company to my Dad. My Dad "acha to tumhari company taxi chalte hain.." I meant its not wrong but I laughed so hard.


But isnt that true


Based on a couple of LinkedIn posts I saw, that's exactly what happened. I wish they hadn't reneged offers for start dates that were inside of 2-3 weeks.


I'm not sure what visa you are on, but for H1B you don't need to quit/give up your visa with current company to start processing with new employer. Even after your h1b with new company is approved it isn't necessary to quit your current job or give up that visa. Also, if you're in software, a lot of people here can help. Good luck! Hopefully you'll find something soon.


I would agree with you in most cases, but somehow can never convince myself to stay at Trump hotel ever!


Having been in many managerial discussions where we try to figure out how to sugarcoat the real message, I'd much rather prefer the Elon version. I do agree that some level of empathy in the email would be nice but still hate th corp version. Atleast this way, there is no ambiguity about the seriousness of his ask.


Even if they don't, I imagine they will have conversations internally to see what's feasible. It's just really difficult for an organization to move away from a product that everyone has learnt how to use. The company I work for is struggling to move away from something as simple as a collaborative editor, when I feel like I find no difference between the two products.


I don't understand why we expect Amazon to do the right thing vs we should expect in this case all retailers to do the right thing? Unfortunately as consumers we are always looking for the best deal or the lowest price on everything. Which means retailers need to cut costs every way possible which in turn leads to sucking every ounce out of workers.

Let's assume that Amazon did end up making things way better for their workers. That means higher costs and hence higher prices. This will allow other retailers to win markets by setting the best prices.

I think we need regulation that applies to all retailers in this case or all industries that hire manual labor vs constantly targeting Amazon for being the bad guy.


It's funny that this logic is rarely applied to executive compensation or stock buybacks. Apparently it only hurts competitiveness to increase wages for the low-level workers. Any of the other ways that money gets wasted in a major retail corporation is fine.

And then there are the counterexamples, like Costco, that manage to pay well and be wildly competitive.


Jeff Bezos's $200B says he's not paying the most he can while still surviving in business.


Let's do some math for fun. Amazon now employs about a million workers in the US. Let's naively assume 3/4 of them work in warehouses and delivery as opposed to corporate. Let's also assume they work, on average, 2000 hours a year (roughly full-time). For Amazon to raise those wages by $1/hr (or lower efficiency demands by ~7%) it would cost them around $1.5B every year.

Now, you're probably thinking that's chump change compared to Amazon's profits, but fun fact: Amazon's online sales segment doesn't make much profit. In fact, it lost $200M in Q4 [1]. So you basically want Amazon to either go deeply in the red, or else they have to raise prices on products to also raise worker wages.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/04/amazons-profit-engines-are-h...


Amazon doesn’t lose money with what you’re saying. They are moving money around. We need to stop trusting wildly rich and powerful people and corporations so much.


If it was really losing $800M/year why would they keep it running at all? Could this be "creative accounting"?


[flagged]


Rich man reasonable, but the idea Amazon sales are gross-margin-negative is borderline retarded. Margins on sales are going into other things, like re-investment in the business instead of wages. The loss is engineered to increase future revenue. That may create more jobs in the long run and make Amazon more competitive, but lets call a spade a spade.


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