One of the more worrying things to me is how this pandemic (and/or our response to it) will disproportionately affect small businesses and individuals. As Amazon hires 100k workers how many jobs are being lost by small businesses failing?
I suspected Amazon would do well in this crisis, and this development confirms it.<p>My elderly neighbors, for example, are now ordering their groceries online and having them dumped on their doorstep.
Hard to find a non-cynical comment on HN these days, so I'll just say: this is cool. A way for people to get crucial goods in a relatively safe way, and some new jobs with a pay boost in a time of economic instability.
Amazon seems pretty constrained by supply to me right now. Everything I have looked for to stock up on from them due to the current conditions (alcohol wipes, nonperishable food, etc) is sold out. But maybe they have scaled up supply more than I realize and workers are becoming more of a bottleneck than inventory.<p>Even if everything was in stock I'd expect my overall online purchases to decline in the next few months. I'm not really worried about new clothes if I'm not going outside, and a lot of things like toys and gadgets I usually waste money on seem a lot less important with a worldwide pandemic growing exponentially outside. I'm probably an outlier though in terms of how much I spend/waste on online shopping discretionary spending in normal circumstances (and a lot of that discretionary spending like clothes is not going to amazon anyway).
No matter how many, some people will complain about this. There is a huge recesion in the entire world and a company is willing to hire more people and haters gonna hate.
Where is the comment here on billionaire taxes?<p>Literally Amazon is the only company because of which I feel comfortable right now sitting in my house vs. panic buying.
I mean, here in Brooklyn you literally <i>cannot</i> order AmazonFresh. No delivery slots no matter how far in the future you scroll. And it's been this way for at least a couple of days now.<p>So makes sense.
Don't thousands of people work in each warehouse? Are Amazon workers immune? At some point, some of these facilities are going to have closures. I wouldn't predict smooth sailing for Amazon just because they're mail-order instead of brick and mortar.
I hope they're finding ways to help keep them safe in the process. It would be a huge benefit for people to be able to order things online, but not if the warehouses themselves become cesspools of transmission.
I really hope Bezos brings the full power of Amazon's distribution network to bear on this crisis. Traditional retailers seem strictly worse from the epidemiological perspective - you have to go to the store and there are hundreds of people there at least a few of whom will have the virus, if not now, then 2 weeks from now. They are also largely failing to cope with panic buying, whereas Amazon's efficiency only gets better if people buy a lot of stuff.<p>I also hope Amazon does this responsibly, and creates the conditions in which the strictest possible social distancing could be maintained for people working in the warehouses.<p>It's pretty clear to me that we can't shut down the economy due to this for any extended period of time. We also can't do these planet-scale epidemiological drills every year. If that's the case, we should figure out a way to alleviate our current predicament as much as possible until there is a vaccine or a cure. Amazon can be a large part of that.
From what I'm seeing: Grocery Health and Beauty way up; everything else way down. If I were a RA person I'd be buying buying children's games from Walmart and hope the input warehouse can handle the influx of shipments. RA is still alive and well for the hustlers. I'm rooting for them!
Seeing Amazon surge hire 100k people makes me think of Zorg.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0mO6UY6uTg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0mO6UY6uTg</a>
Why not have the delivery and logistics of goods just exist as a general public service?<p>Then put the potential profits made into running a better society.
Do we know yet what the probability of packaging borne transmission is? Has anyone seen anything? I saw one study describing virus lifetime on various surfaces but I don't think they tested cardboard.<p>Also I don't know what they're expecting. They either have mountains of stock or they'll be laying these people back off soon when factories close. I think supplies out of China are still disrupted.
If this were a Bond movie, Bezos would be cackling in his secret lair about how his viral plan was coming to fruition. Bond (played by Idris Elba) would then cough on Bezos, who would whip out his antidote, which Bond would grab, escape, and release to the world before being killed by Thanos. (Pitch Meeting, call me)
I don't know if I should be happy about it or not. The world is currently having a tough time battling Covid-19. How safe it is for these people to work during the outbreak?
At some point even Amazon workers will have to stop working to contain the virus. How Amazon if going to provide safety to workers when even doctors with all protection still gets the virus?