|
quote:Amazon would lose almost all of its cash on hand if it had two bad years (or one extremely bad year) in a row because the margins are so razor thin. It's pretty much an immutable law that any company will one day stop expanding, but it's silly to judge Amazon on the basis of that happening without insight into how they will react. Right now Amazon is in an extended honeymoon phase where it is still the cool place to work and do the minimum two years to get the good stock options. Microsoft went through this phase, and the adjustment was rough, but it survives. It's also foolish to look at Amazon as Just Another Retailer for a lot of reasons. AWS makes more money than their entire North American retail business.
|
#
?
May 17, 2017 10:12
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 23:38 |
|
|
OhFunny posted:http://www.al.com/business/index.ssf/2017/05/gymboree_could_close_up_to_350.html I've never stepped inside one of these or rue21. Rip
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2017 11:22
|
|
|
got any sevens posted:I've never stepped inside one of these or rue21. Rip Gymboree sells cheapish kid's clothes. I dress my kid in a lot of their stuff. I may be the only one who would miss them.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2017 11:55
|
|
|
Yeah, the Gymboree news sucks.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2017 12:38
|
|
|
Raldikuk posted:They still do this. The best is if something doesn't have a price tag since they don't even use the upc at all in the system. I had to stand and wait for 15 mins for a manager to try and find the item I had and its price but none of them had one on it. I finally negotiated a price and the cashier typed the price in under whatever department it was. Apparently this is because the hobby lobby owners believe upcs are the mark of the devil or somesuch. Yep, the ownership are crazy Christians who believe the late 70s/80s propaganda that barcodes are of the devil. When I get to my computer I can embed an example of the kind of video those groups would send around. Edit: ok so this is one of the later ones, released in the late 80s, but it's the same story as the rest: upcs are the mark of the beast, they have 666 in them, it's all a trick to get barcodes tattooed on your skin, the new world order is going to station soldiers in the supermarket, etc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lknW2mzXMMY Here's another one from the 90s that's more "serious" and "skeptical" but still goes HUH WELL MAYBE BARCODES ARE EVIL BETTER NOT USE EM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iST5Ip8a9nk fishmech fucked around with this message at 14:22 on May 17, 2017 |
|
#
?
May 17, 2017 14:13
|
|
|
dont even fink about it posted:Amazon re-invests its profits and thus never shows a massive profit; but it's responsible for half of all Internet commerce by value. This is not inexplicable, it is good business; what you are supposed to do with a company. The objective should not be to bust out the best monetary shareholder value every quarter, that's the ethos of doomed companies. They don't need to keep physical storefronts and the associated overhead, which allows them to destroy brick and mortar retail (what use they see in opening their own brick and mortars for anything but grocery is beyond me; seems like a silly experiment by a company with a lot of assets to burn on such things). Yes, that is what I was saying. Amazon is run that way because Bezos has an insane amount of freedom from his investors. Most companies would not be allowed to run on razor-thin margins for decades because they are experimenting with tons of weird things. The thing is that Amazon can't keep expanding/reinvesting like that forever. The current business model is not infinitely sustainable, so it will be interesting to see what happens when they get near that point or they have a couple of bad years and stockholders panic. I don't think Amazon is in trouble or anything. It's just that at some point it is going to have to change and that will probably be a bummer for the consumer.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2017 14:22
|
|
|
If the consumer doesn't like Amazon any more, there are plenty of other ecommerce sites out there. The only thing Amazon has got over them is cheap, fast delivery. That goes, the customer will go.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2017 14:52
|
|
|
Raldikuk posted:Apparently this is because the hobby lobby owners believe upcs are the mark of the devil or somesuch. I do know that they don't order about 35% of the merchandise they get from their warehouses - it's just randomly shipped because corporate HQ thinks those items will sell in that specific store. How they reach that conclusion, I don't know. That is essentially what their Home Accents department is. Having seen the specific markups on a bunch of the tacky poo poo they get, that company is probably rolling in money, so it would explain why the owners are so stubborn about changing anything major. Still, I cannot stress how weird experiencing that whole system was. The first time I saw the department heads order I half-expected to walk into the office and see the 1985 version of my dad at his old office manager job, sitting at a three-piece computer desk and working on a business computer system that had one of those four-foot towers with actual disc-shaped computer disks inside. Crazy Ted fucked around with this message at 15:07 on May 17, 2017 |
|
#
?
May 17, 2017 15:03
|
|
|
fishmech posted:Edit: ok so this is one of the later ones, released in the late 80s, but it's the same story as the rest: upcs are the mark of the beast, they have 666 in them, it's all a trick to get barcodes tattooed on your skin, the new world order is going to station soldiers in the supermarket, etc: Hahaha holy poo poo, I never knew this was a thing.  How the gently caress can one be upset about something as benign as black stripes on a box while your God has commanded you to feed the hungry and clothe the naked (and there are a ton of examples of the latter out there)? I'm honestly trying to come up with a modern business or system that wouldn't interact with barcodes at one point or another, and struggling to do so. Did these weirdos give up on it, or are they living in communes and farming to escape the great Satan?
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2017 15:05
|
|
|
Ripoff posted:I'm honestly trying to come up with a modern business or system that wouldn't interact with barcodes at one point or another, and struggling to do so. Did these weirdos give up on it, or are they living in communes and farming to escape the great Satan?
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2017 15:09
|
|
|
Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Yes, that is what I was saying. If there's ever any serious worry about profitability, they'll cut the fat (like the pseudo-TV network they're building) pretty quick and still probably be able to continue investing in areas that are more profitable.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2017 15:14
|
|
|
dont even fink about it posted:
Is that really true? Just about everyone I know says it is a total shitshow. I had a friend do a stint there doing some kind of logistics work during her last year of college and she hated everything about the culture there and I don't think the pay was really consummate with the cost of living in Seattle. All my Comp Sci friends have said they are avoiding them like the plague and I'm two degrees of separation from someone who is desperately trying to hire more people on for one of their tech bits. Plus, it's common knowledge that they treat their warehouse employees like cattle and one of these days they might lose a lawsuit over it. From what I can tell, the only inherently profitable thing that they have going is the server stuff they are running, everything else is predicated on paying a bunch of peons starvation-level wages in a hostile work environment. Edit: Here's some of the specific stuff I was remembering, obviously 3.7 million is a pittance to them but it still signals that they are relying on some pretty shady stuff to keep their delivery service working. https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...m=.a0f96ca2a831 https://www.law360.com/articles/825451/amazon-warehouse-workers-seek-ok-for-3-7m-wage-deal BougieBitch fucked around with this message at 15:19 on May 17, 2017 |
|
#
?
May 17, 2017 15:16
|
|
|
Taintrunner posted:Didn't Radio Shack die, try to revive itself with Carlos Mencia in their commercials, and is now about to die again? They def partnered with Nelly for some lame headphone line.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2017 15:22
|
|
|
dont even fink about it posted:Right now Amazon is in an extended honeymoon phase where it is still the cool place to work and do the minimum two years to get the good stock options. Microsoft went through this phase, and the adjustment was rough, but it survives. Amazon has a notoriously lovely work-culture, it's pretty much the polar opposite of Google in that regard.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2017 15:23
|
|
|
BougieBitch posted:Is that really true? Just about everyone I know says it is a total shitshow. I had a friend do a stint there doing some kind of logistics work during her last year of college and she hated everything about the culture there and I don't think the pay was really consummate with the cost of living in Seattle. All my Comp Sci friends have said they are avoiding them like the plague and I'm two degrees of separation from someone who is desperately trying to hire more people on for one of their tech bits. Plus, it's common knowledge that they treat their warehouse employees like cattle and one of these days they might lose a lawsuit over it. From what I can tell, the only inherently profitable thing that they have going is the server stuff they are running, everything else is predicated on paying a bunch of peons starvation-level wages in a hostile work environment. It's an insanely lovely place to work all the way through the corporate offices. It breeds such reactionary backstabbing in it's employees that companies either refuse to hire people from Amazon or have to do extensive deprogramming. They are actually called Am-holes because it changes people so thoroughly.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2017 15:25
|
|
|
BarbarianElephant posted:If the consumer doesn't like Amazon any more, there are plenty of other ecommerce sites out there. The only thing Amazon has got over them is cheap, fast delivery. That goes, the customer will go. Yes, but why would that go away? Cutting that isn't going to save money. Ripoff posted:Hahaha holy poo poo, I never knew this was a thing. Well it's simple: it was something that was new and therefore evil. It was part of a greater movement of "computers are evil tools of the devil!" poo poo. At this point Hobby Lobby is one of the few companies left that both operates mass retail and refuses to switch to using barcodes. Most other companies that don't use them are dealing with low volume business at a single location, where they just can't be bothered to set up the database for them. Crazy Ted posted:If I remember correctly, during a discussion with a manager about inventory (I used to do inventory control and ordering at another part-time job) the reason is that the owners actually think that switching to modern (and by modern I mean invented in about 1983) scanner systems literally isn't worth the cost - either up front or in the long term. Yeah that would have to be them just trying to cover their asses. It's something that might have held true in 1987, but these days you practically have to go out of your way to not save money using a barcode system at their scale of business. All their registers and poo poo are going to support it, and the scanner wands are dirt cheap.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2017 15:44
|
|
|
Blue Star posted:i think we should all be naked all the time. Hell yeah Raldikuk posted:They still do this. The best is if something doesn't have a price tag since they don't even use the upc at all in the system. I had to stand and wait for 15 mins for a manager to try and find the item I had and its price but none of them had one on it. I finally negotiated a price and the cashier typed the price in under whatever department it was. Apparently this is because the hobby lobby owners believe upcs are the mark of the devil or somesuch. The three short bars in the code are 6 making 666 in ever bar code thus you are marked with the number of the beast when you buy poo poo, as explained in this vhs
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2017 16:03
|
|
|
This is a silly anecdote, but about a dozen middle-aged ladies in my office have been complaining all day because a local JC Penny's is closing down. Apparently, they liked "the old" JC Penny's before they "banned coupons" and they never shopped there again after they did that. This is why we will never be able to have transparent pricing. People like to get robbed. They preferred to shop at Kohl's to buy an "$80" pair of jeans that were "marked down" to $40 instead of just buying the same jeans for $35 at JC Penny's. The poor CEO of Penny's had an idea that made sense and would have legitimately been the best for consumers, but he forgot that the human mind is broken and lost his job for it.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2017 18:53
|
|
|
Jeff Bezos I am pretty sure read some Cyberpunk books in the 80's and was like "Yup I can totally build my own Megacorp" down to setting it up in Seattle.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2017 19:19
|
|
|
Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:This is a silly anecdote, but about a dozen middle-aged ladies in my office have been complaining all day because a local JC Penny's is closing down. It's a great lesson to point to for all those idiots who claim that advertising doesn't work on them. People are dumb and easily tricked and there is so much science involved in marketing.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2017 19:27
|
|
|
Pharohman777 posted:Can anyone tell more horror stories of ancient franken-tech in retail? Sounds fascinating. My local Dillards is using an ancient computer/card reader from the 80s thats all gross and yellowed with age in all of their checkout counters
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2017 19:33
|
|
|
BougieBitch posted:Is that really true? Just about everyone I know says it is a total shitshow. I had a friend do a stint there doing some kind of logistics work during her last year of college and she hated everything about the culture there and I don't think the pay was really consummate with the cost of living in Seattle. All my Comp Sci friends have said they are avoiding them like the plague and I'm two degrees of separation from someone who is desperately trying to hire more people on for one of their tech bits. Plus, it's common knowledge that they treat their warehouse employees like cattle and one of these days they might lose a lawsuit over it. From what I can tell, the only inherently profitable thing that they have going is the server stuff they are running, everything else is predicated on paying a bunch of peons starvation-level wages in a hostile work environment. Work-life-poo poo balance at Amazon varies wildly based on team, as it tends to do at most tech companies. Amazon will have more Nazi-like stuff going on because it's the hotter company right now and there's more pressure in some areas to prove you are worthy (any area that Jeff Bezos' flaming eye is focused on, any area that relates to the shipping business where everything is a hi-pri thing). Please note that I am not saying that Amazon Horror Stories are not real, but even the author of the famous NYT expose admits the above about Amazon's culture. In terms of engineering vs. working on the shipping floor, you're talking about two fields that are about as different as you can get.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2017 21:37
|
|
|
I work in manufacturing operations and have to interface with its horrible vendor tech. I get why they do it, trying to push vendors to respond faster. If they have it their way they wouldn't need warehouses they would just force vendors to adopt their delivery metrics to sell. Kind of pulling a reverse Walmart. I've heard they have been pulling in Walmart operations folks at the higher levels which makes sense. I really wish my company wouldn't sell on Amazon. I also think some of the logarithmic fining of merchants they do is a step away from class action. It's shady as hell. And has no basis in reality.
|
|
#
?
May 18, 2017 04:40
|
|
|
What do you mean "logarithmic fining"?
|
|
#
?
May 18, 2017 04:49
|
|
|
dont even fink about it posted:Work-life-poo poo balance at Amazon varies wildly based on team, as it tends to do at most tech companies. Amazon will have more Nazi-like stuff going on because it's the hotter company right now and there's more pressure in some areas to prove you are worthy (any area that Jeff Bezos' flaming eye is focused on, any area that relates to the shipping business where everything is a hi-pri thing). Please note that I am not saying that Amazon Horror Stories are not real, but even the author of the famous NYT expose admits the above about Amazon's culture. You say that, but the actual hot-poo poo companies like Google don't get the same horror stories. Amazon, in my mind, seems like it takes the worst qualities of the retail sector into the tech sector. The fact that I hear recent graduates talk about not wanting to work for Amazon without any prompting indicates to me that they are going to have a hard time retaining talent in the long-run, and that's a problem for a company that is only successful because it is on the cutting edge.
|
|
#
?
May 18, 2017 15:15
|
|
|
Amazon is in kind of a weird spot ideologically. I know that sounds weird, but what I mean by that is that tech companies in general tend to have this stance that they are just tech companies. Uber isn't a cab company, Facebook isn't a media company, etc. They just enable mutually beneficial communication between other parties. Amazon is manifestly a retailer.
|
|
#
?
May 18, 2017 15:25
|
|
|
BougieBitch posted:You say that, but the actual hot-poo poo companies like Google don't get the same horror stories. Amazon, in my mind, seems like it takes the worst qualities of the retail sector into the tech sector. The fact that I hear recent graduates talk about not wanting to work for Amazon without any prompting indicates to me that they are going to have a hard time retaining talent in the long-run, and that's a problem for a company that is only successful because it is on the cutting edge. Recent college grads don't know poo poo about anything, though. "Not as good to work at as Google, the company that doubles as a private resort and works overtime to market themselves as that" is also a nearly meaningless stat. Notice I'm not saying Amazon is good to work at; but if you think similar problems aren't hitting employees at companies that are less sexy and well-publicized at the moment, I've got a bridge to sell you. Amazon is an enormous company with fingers in a number of wildly different pies, so broad stroke claims like "It sucks to work at Amazon" are without real meaning. You don't want to work at the division of Microsoft that makes their phones, for example. That has little relevance to the larger Microsoft.
|
|
#
?
May 18, 2017 21:48
|
|
|
BougieBitch posted:You say that, but the actual hot-poo poo companies like Google don't get the same horror stories. Amazon, in my mind, seems like it takes the worst qualities of the retail sector into the tech sector. The fact that I hear recent graduates talk about not wanting to work for Amazon without any prompting indicates to me that they are going to have a hard time retaining talent in the long-run, and that's a problem for a company that is only successful because it is on the cutting edge. I've heard horror stories about nearly every SV big shot being a 80-100 hour a week job. Some companies just market themselves better. As with every company ever it depends on who you work for. I've worked at "great" companies with sterling reputations that were absolute poo poo shows with abusive managers and a death march mentality. I've worked at places that get labeled IT Sweatshops that were great.
|
|
#
?
May 18, 2017 21:56
|
|
|
Amazon doesn't do any of the crazy perks that google does which buys the latter a lot of good will for not very much money/employee. They still want crazy hours out of people. No idea how they treat their warehouse employees compared to amazon though.
|
|
#
?
May 18, 2017 23:29
|
|
|
Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Amazon doesn't do any of the crazy perks that google does which buys the latter a lot of good will for not very much money/employee. They still want crazy hours out of people. Well Amazon kills them from heat exhaustion and doesn't give them breaks so it's not a real high bar to clear.
|
|
#
?
May 18, 2017 23:35
|
|
|
axeil posted:Well Amazon kills them from heat exhaustion and doesn't give them breaks so it's not a real high bar to clear.
|
|
#
?
May 18, 2017 23:42
|
|
|
dont even fink about it posted:Work-life-poo poo balance at Amazon varies wildly based on team, as it tends to do at most tech companies. Amazon will have more Nazi-like stuff going on because it's the hotter company right now and there's more pressure in some areas to prove you are worthy (any area that Jeff Bezos' flaming eye is focused on, any area that relates to the shipping business where everything is a hi-pri thing). Please note that I am not saying that Amazon Horror Stories are not real, but even the author of the famous NYT expose admits the above about Amazon's culture. As someone who works at Amazon as a Software Engineer, my experience is that Amazon thus far has been a pretty great company to work for. Yea they don't give us free soda and our laptops are 13" instead of 15" but the work life balance, at least on my team, is pretty great. I don't think it's even really a tech company thing, any large company is going to have wildly different cultures/expectations based on your team/department/whatever since it's basically impossible to have a single shared culture across almost 350,000 employees.
|
|
#
?
May 18, 2017 23:59
|
|
|
Stein Mart's stock went down about 1/3 third after reporting lovely results. Also, found this definition on Wikipedia, which is heartening.
|
|
#
?
May 19, 2017 00:02
|
|
|
Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Amazon doesn't do any of the crazy perks that google does which buys the latter a lot of good will for not very much money/employee. They still want crazy hours out of people. As far as Google goes, the East Coast offices are way more laid back, and incidentally less crowded, than the West Coast offices.
|
|
#
?
May 19, 2017 00:42
|
|
|
axeil posted:Well Amazon kills them from heat exhaustion and doesn't give them breaks so it's not a real high bar to clear. As terrible as their warehouse jobs at Amazon they are pretty much the par for warehouse jobs. There is a reason they pay 2-3x minimum wage for zero skills. Warehouse jobs loving suck.
|
|
#
?
May 19, 2017 00:50
|
|
|
It's not like you can put air conditioning in warehouses. That would increase the cost of goods extremely. This is part of the reason why they are researching robotic warehouses so heavily...
|
|
#
?
May 19, 2017 01:26
|
|
|
Steampunk Hitler posted:As someone who works at Amazon as a Software Engineer, my experience is that Amazon thus far has been a pretty great company to work for. Yea they don't give us free soda and our laptops are 13" instead of 15" but the work life balance, at least on my team, is pretty great. lol if you didn't pick the 15" Macbook in last year's hardware refresh But yeah, there are a lot of places in the company where work/life balance is just fine, and also some places where it's not great. Years ago I was in a department in Seattle where one project burned out more than 50% of engineers across about a dozen teams, as well as many of their managers, sr managers, a director, and a VP. I was pretty glad to have been on one of the core teams that didn't see massive attrition. Also never really saw any of the backstabbing people talk about. Back when anonymous peer feedback was a thing, talking poo poo about colleagues was just a really good way to let the department's managers know that they'd be safer not promoting you.
|
|
#
?
May 19, 2017 02:48
|
|
|
ISeeCuckedPeople posted:It's not like you can put air conditioning in warehouses. That would increase the cost of goods extremely. Maybe the tiniest part. They are researching this so heavily because they are hoping to bring costs down by eliminating workers.
|
|
#
?
May 19, 2017 02:48
|
|
|
Xae posted:As terrible as their warehouse jobs at Amazon they are pretty much the par for warehouse jobs. Yeah, I've worked in an Amazon distribution center and it's basically on par with every other non-union factory job; better than many, really, because while Amazon can be assholes they're at least damned efficient assholes, and they employ a lot fewer machines that will literally take your hand off at the wrist if you move wrong. Given a choice between Amazon and a call center, I'd take Amazon every time; at least you get to walk a lot. Also, you get to laugh every time someone orders a fleshlight, because, yeah, the packages have labels.
|
|
#
?
May 19, 2017 03:31
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 23:38 |
|
|
Horseshoe theory posted:Stein Mart's stock went down about 1/3 third after reporting lovely results. Also, found this definition on Wikipedia, which is heartening. Huh. thanks for sharing that because I had never heard of the "restaurant renaissance" before and it's interesting to see some academic support for a trend I've been anecdotally noticing in the circles I run in.
|
|
#
?
May 19, 2017 04:27
|
|
