Amazon’s Latest Experiment: Retraining Its Work Force

I wonder what the success rate is for their retraining program to turn factory workers into coders.<p>When watching Andrew Yang&#x27;s Presidential pitch for UBI he said most government retraining programs only have a success rate of 17%.

My first job out of school 25 years ago they were big on further education and training. You actually had in your yearly objectives that you complete atleast 10 days of training. There was a dedicated campus for this purpose. And these were indepth courses that would spend 5 full days on some skills. I don&#x27;t see that kind of thing any more and miss it.

Maybe unpopular opinion, but I welcome this.<p>The landscape is changing and Amazon is willing to try and put serious effort into keeping its current employees instead of just letting them be laid off only to be left behind.

Amazon revenue in 2018 grew 30% over 2017, but headcount grew only 15%, which is quite an increase in efficiency per employee. That doesn&#x27;t really make the headlines since there is still overall headcount growth.<p>As they get larger it is harder to grow revenue that fast percentage-wise. If revenue growth rates drop below ~15%, and that rate of efficiency gains continue, then it would lead to net headcount reductions, which will likely generate much less positive press. So this seems like a good way to get ahead of that soon to be upcoming bad press. Whether it is just PR spin or a genuine effort to mitigate this is I guess open for debate.

I am waiting for a day when “machine learning scientists” are the blue collar workers.

I misread &quot;retraining&quot; as &quot;retaining&quot;. My first thought was it must be a joke or I misunderstood it.

It kind of bothers me that there&#x27;s always an assumption on HN that we need to retrain people into coders instead of any one of the hundreds of other jobs in high demand. You&#x27;d probably have a lot better results retraining warehouse workers into plumbers, electricians, and HVAC installers, for example. Or on the corporate side, QA testers, entry level IT support, etc.

There are programs in the failing coal towns to teach former coal miners how to code. I&#x27;m not sure the stats on the success rate though.

Headline might be more clear as &#x27;Amazon to Retrain a Third of its U.S. Workers...&#x27;

I definitely read that as &quot;retain.&quot;