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Amazon Cancels Or Delays Plans For At Least 16 Warehouses This Year:
After spending billions doubling the size of its fulfillment network during the pandemic, Amazon finds itself in a perilous position.
In the first quarter of 2022, the e-commerce giant reported a $3.8 billion net loss after raking in an $8.1 billion profit in Q1 2021. That includes $6 billion in added costs — the bulk of which can be traced back to that same fulfillment network.
Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) CFO Brian Olsavsky said the company chose to expand its warehouse network based on "the high end of a very volatile demand outlook." So far this year, though, it has shut down or delayed plans for at least 16 scheduled facilities.
"We currently have some excess capacity in the network that we need to grow into," Olsavsky told investors on Amazon's Q1 2022 earnings call. "So, we've brought down our build expectations. Note again that many of the build decisions were made 18 to 24 months ago, so there are limitations on what we can adjust midyear."
[...] If you're wondering how that's possible, consider Amazon's unmatched turnover rate. A New York Times investigation uncovered that even before the pandemic, it was as high as 150%. That means there are more employees leaving Amazon warehouses each year than there are being hired.
[Ed's Comment: AC Friendly withdrawn. You can blame you-know-who for the spamming]
In fact, there has been so much turnover that Amazon began tracking it weekly and found it loses an estimated 3% of its warehouse workers every seven days. That means the e-commerce powerhouse sifts through its entire supply of warehouse labor every eight months on average.
Simply put, the strategy isn't sustainable long term. Still, Wulfraat believes Amazon can weather the storm.
"It will take some time to iron out the wrinkles, but they will get through it," he told Supply Chain Dive.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 06 2022, @08:40PM (7 children)
Yes. There were quite a few who left (loudly, and I'm sure a bunch more who left quietly like me) long before I threw in the towel.
And the negativity hasn't gone (completely) unnoticed [ycombinator.com] elsewhere [ycombinator.com].
As you noted, this is a complicated issue -- one that you'd hope could be addressed by user moderation. But it seems that some folks (and not only ACs, either) are toxic enough to either engender the same from others, drive folks away and/or both.
And more's the pity.
I'd have no issue with that. One of the things I like about Hacker News is that there is no AC posting, and one builds/destroys their reputation based on the comments/submissions they post. But since you can create an account with no email address or confirmation, it's a simple matter to create a "throwaway" account(s) that mimic AC posting.
Personally, I mostly prefer posting pseudonymously rather than anonymously, as it allows me to be *me* without doxxing myself. Of course, if SN were to be pwned or one of the admins went rogue (unlikely, given the volunteers I know about), my identity could be exposed.
Then again, I don't think exposing even the more outrageous stuff I've posted here would bug me all that much. That said, I have been pseudonymous more to (at least attempt to) maintain my privacy than to troll/shitpost or generally make an ass of myself.
I can't (and wouldn't try to) speak for anyone else, but I always thought that was a reasonable tradeoff.
That's the best (read: coherent and succinct) description of what kept me on SN for six plus years that I've seen, including my own comments (and there have been a bunch) on the subject.
Aside from banning the most toxic folks (which you've already begun to do), I think you've got it mostly covered.
The questions then become, "will the core folks who've stuck around through all of this continue to do so?" and "will the toxically combative and relentlessly nihilistic members of that group stop being fucking assholes for the lulz?"
If the answer is "yes," there's a chance that SN can be saved. If "no," I'm not sure what anyone can do to save it.
And no, I'm not talking about EthanolFueled. He's just your garden variety jerk that's easily dealt with. Rather, I'm talking about the folks who troll and bait with abandon and then get "offended" when they're called out, even though they know *exactly* what they're doing.
It's painful to try and have a relatively civil discussion when there's a bunch people (and not all of them ACs, either) who seemingly take great pleasure in derailing honest (if heated) discussions.
That's not an indictment of any particular political viewpoint, either. DeathMonkey and Khallow hold opposite (at least in the US sense -- as the "left" in the US is center-right, and the "right" are pretty far right-wing) political views.
And while both of them have been known to be both unreasonable and (occasionally) in error where the truth is concerned, they are generally willing to let their rhetoric and facts speak for them, rather than flat out lying and using mod points, sock puppets and ad hominems to control discussions.
I don't know if SN can be fixed, because if the folks here aren't going to engage in honest, relatively respectful debate, we'll just end up becoming the impression that folks elsewhere have of SN [ycombinator.com].
I wish I could give you more positive feedback.
I may well come back, if for no other reason than to try to help make SN more like it used to be -- people yelling at each other, but doing so relatively honestly and respectfully.
But I'm going to have to think about that.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 06 2022, @10:52PM (5 children)
I'm dalek, posting as an AC because I want to add to this discussion but would prefer not to clutter the discussion up with an off-topic post at +2. The IP hash should match the posts I've made recently with this account, though my IP did change a few days ago for some reason.
I see part of the problem being that community members reward toxic posts. I'll give you an example. Take a look in a recent journal [soylentnews.org] by DannyB. One of the highest rated comments [soylentnews.org] there is a shitpost. It's obvious from the posting style who posted it. It doesn't further the discussion or contribute anything to answer the question I asked. I modded it down as flamebait because it's a shitpost. Since then, five users have modded it up. Meanwhile, I've written comments that I hope are thoughtful, trying to explain why violent crime is so high in some American cities. Only one of my comments has been modded up in that thread, and it only got modded up once.
It signals to me that the community, or at least the people moderating in those journals, value that shitpost more than trying to actually explain why violent crime is so prevalent in those places. Post comments that are shitposts or inflame partisan tensions and you get modded up. Post comments that try to actually look at the issues with a bit of depth and they don't get modded up. It signals to me that it may not be worth the effort to write thoughtful comments because the people who read and moderate there don't value those contributions very much.
I know that the staff would like a higher quality of discussion and a community that is less toxic. I definitely don't blame them for the situation, nor do I have any good recommendations to try to address the problem. But it's very easy to see why people get drawn to posting toxic comments. They got modded up. If I took the opportunity to insult Runaway or rant against Republicans, I'd probably get modded up more. Insults directed at people I disagree with might be entertaining for a moment, but I don't get anything out of those comments. I'm certainly not learning anything or getting any ideas that are worth pondering. But those comments seem to be what the community values, and that's why we get more of those comments.
Is it actually worth posting thoughtful comments if the community doesn't value them? That said, if members of the community who would post less toxic comments walk away, it just concentrates the toxicity and makes things worse. I know I've posted my share of toxic things in the past, but from seeing the results, I certainly want to be better. But a significant portion of the community has to decide that this has gotten out of hand if we're going to see a significant difference. If enough people like you who want to eliminate the toxicity choose to stick around, we might be able to make a difference.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 07 2022, @12:27AM (2 children)
[Yet a totally different AC in this thread] I've only ever browsed at -1 going all the way back to the late 90s. I've never found the troll and shitpost comments too troublesome to deal with except for the copypasta that fills the screen that requires scrolling more than normal. The thing about browsing at -1 is that I really don't pay a lot of attention to what a comment is modded to, because I see them all, so +5 doesn't stand out much more than a +1 to me. Even in the slashdot heyday I never could relate to people who found browsing at -1 "unbearable." I always found it annoying when there was a -1 top post and a +3 somewhere down the line in how the thread would be presented to me if I had any browsing threshold set, so I just found it easier to always see all of the comments and make my own decisions. There is always that benefit of seeing someone unfairly modded down below zero and be able to fix it, but I rarely every see that now or back then. So I don't really get hung up on what gets modded up or down. I do, however, like to use my mod points and promote good comments, because I think people do care, but I almost never mod anything down.
Maybe I've burned out a very long time ago during the usenet flamewars, or maybe I'm that much older now and I don't care about internet arguments, so it doesn't get to me that much. You've got your equivalents of the uncle at Thanksgiving who has to keep spouting whatever is the cable "news" mouthpiece talking point of the week, but I treat it like I do at Thanksgiving and roll my eyes and talk with others. However, even the Thanksgiving uncle has interesting things to say on non-talking-point topics and I'm happy he came to dinner, so I just view the community here as a large dysfunctional family, just like you get in real life.
Because I read more than I post, I try to keep in mind that the opinions and views of the ones that post the most doesn't necessarily reflect the community thoughts and opinions, so it is disappointing to see some of the comments in the ycombinator links above. I really prefer to have very little politics here because there is very little discourse on that any more, things have become so nasty and zero-sum, so if a topic turns that way, once it devolves into repeating of this week's talking point spin then I move on to the next thread. I'd welcome interesting arguments there, but unfortunately I don't think we'll be ready for that again for quite a while, at least until we get tired of grievance politics and move on to talking about solutions.
So anyway, it is a shame that people have moved on if it really was due to the comments section. I've stuck around from the beginning because I like the articles put forward and I like learning from other people. I also like submitting stories for consideration that I think others would like or would generate some interesting discussion. I think I'm pretty smart in the areas that I'm smart about, but there are a lot of areas I'm not smart in and I like to hear people who are smart in those areas (or at least sound smart in those areas). There are some stores that generate very few comments, but that's fine because those stories are usually about something really cool, but there's not much any of us are going to add to it except maybe to make a witty comment (such as a new observation about Uranus, where either we're going to break out into a discussion of complex atmospheric chemistry, or more likely make a few sophomoric comments because not many of us know a lot about complex atmospheric chemistry, but it doesn't mean that I didn't find the article really cool).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 07 2022, @03:19AM
> [Yet a totally different AC in this thread] I've only ever browsed at -1
I'm yet another AC (this is first post in this thread) and I'd just like to second the parent--if I had time to think things through I'd likely write something very similar and tolerant (but busy this week).
I am logged in, and yes there is a "default-to post-as-AC" button that I have turned on. I'm also the SN resident post-theological (I've posted the following link several times previously), https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/our-humanity-naturally/201102/being-post-theological [psychologytoday.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 07 2022, @04:28AM
Same here, apart from the copypasta that fills an entire screen, I never found anything to be so troublesome as to be worth filtering out posts based on score. In my experience, the high value posts will often times be either -1 or 5, with the ones at 0 being the ones that are typically of little value. Those are the ones that I'd filter out if I could.
But, ultimately, filtering out posts just means that you see only one side of the conversation.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 07 2022, @05:40PM (1 child)
AC who started this thread here. Okay. I'll out myself. It's NotSanguine [soylentnews.org] here. And you make an excellent point.
I backed away only partly because of the toxic comments of others. The main reason was the I was posting toxic comments, and when I realized what I was doing I didn't like it (or my comments) much.
That's not to say I didn't *also* post thoughtful comments as well, but I really didn't like how I was behaving. That had less to do with the spam (although that was quite annoting) and more to do with the inability/unwillingness of (some) folks to engage honestly and in good faith.
Frustration about that made me *less* charitable and less willing to to give people the benefit of the doubt. And it definitely had a negative impact on *my* discourse.
That was sobering. I was part of the problem. And so I had to step back.
As I said previously, I miss this place. And as such, I will try again.
I can't change the past, but I can try to do better in the future. I hope that works.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday July 10 2022, @03:21AM
There's a natural tendency to believe those who disagree with us are not doing so in good faith. Anyone with contrary ideas must be trolling, dishonest, or too stupid to live... and based on that assumption, one becomes inclined to post a needlessly nasty response. And things go to hell from there.
So, you are right. Benefit of the doubt is a good thing. Disagreement doesn't automatically mean the other guy is a fuckwit.
You and I probably disagree on everything. But even so, welcome back.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by pdfernhout on Saturday July 09 2022, @04:47PM
https://web.archive.org/web/20131130191257/http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html [archive.org]
"So these are human patterns that have shown up on the Internet, not because of the software, but because it's being used by humans. Bion has identified this possibility of groups sandbagging their sophisticated goals with these basic urges. And what he finally came to, in analyzing this tension, is that group structure is necessary. Robert's Rules of Order are necessary. Constitutions are necessary. Norms, rituals, laws, the whole list of ways that we say, out of the universe of possible behaviors, we're going to draw a relatively small circle around the acceptable ones.
He said the group structure is necessary to defend the group from itself. Group structure exists to keep a group on target, on track, on message, on charter, whatever. To keep a group focused on its own sophisticated goals and to keep a group from sliding into these basic patterns. Group structure defends the group from the action of its own members. ...
This pattern has happened over and over and over again. Someone built the system, they assumed certain user behaviors. The users came on and exhibited different behaviors. And the people running the system discovered to their horror that the technological and social issues could not in fact be decoupled. ..."
Previously posted here: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=50120&cid=1257270 [soylentnews.org]
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.