By the way, thanks for pointing this out. With all this craziness around Musk's ventures and Twitter, my BS detector has become totally blinded. Hadn't I posted this comment and then had been corrected, I would have still believed Musk was able to commit to these crazy terms. Of course, this would be too much even for him.
Speaking of the benefits of sharing one's thoughts on HN.
Comparing packages to deliveries is apples to oranges. I don't disagree that these jobs are rough but 120 deliveries with an average of 3-4 packages per delivery paints a similar picture.
Do you have any source for this? It seems like a really weird assumption to make, especially given that Amazon will already bundle multiple orders into the same package.
I think their point is that you probably can't compare these two numbers very well because they measure different things, and in the case of Amazon if on average they have 3-4 packages per delivery then the two companies would have very similar numbers.
Sidenote, I hate "cant compare apples to oranges" because you eminently can. I'd argue it is much easier to compare things that are very similar! Apples and oranges both have sugars and acids, skins, are recognized as fruits, and are frequently interchangeable. Comparing apples to cranes is much more difficult. "comparing apples to oranges" should mean the comparison is relatively easy to make on a variety of axes!
I should clarify that comment with if you made a naïve assumption of 3-4 packages per delivery then it's a similar workload. I don't doubt that Amazon workers are treated worse than UPS workers but comparing packages to deliveries without normalizing somehow is not productive.
The 400 package number from the article is also specifically cited from this company and we have no idea whether that is a nationwide figure while the UPS comment implies that it is.
> if you made a naïve assumption of 3-4 packages per delivery then it's a similar workload
But you're still just making an assumption with 0 evidence. I would love to see a distribution of how common multi-package deliveries are, but we don't have that information, and I highly suspect that it's overwhelmingly one package per delivery.
It seems like an exceptionally bad assumption that Amazon is regularly shipping 3-4 items individually rather than bundling them up. After all, they are basically a logistics company at this point.
If we're just making assumptions here, you may as well assume that most Amazon deliveries are to apartment buildings, where the driver just leaves everything at the front desk, there are 200 packagers per delivery, and the driver is only making 2 stops per day.
I'm not making an argument one way or the other beyond that the OP conflating deliveries with packages is inaccurate and misleading. People are acting like drivers are expected to make 400 individual deliveries a day which doesn't remotely pass any sort of sniff test.
Bundling seems like a cost reduction when using a shipper like UPS who charge per package. If you control delivery chain end to end, paying per hours of delivery time, there's probably less savings.
Less savings doesn't mean no savings. It will still for the most part use additional packaging, additional sorting, additional space in trucks, additional labor in terms of locating packages, and additional risk if the driver misses 1/n packages.
How are you defining delivery? Packages going to the same address? I live in a development of ~100 unit apartment buildings. It will literally take the UPS/FedEx truck all day to go less than a thousand feet through the development, and in that time they're delivering hundreds of packages.
Also, Amazon has a large number of different warehouses that products are shipped from, and it's quite common for different items/orders to not ship together either for that reason or because some items' availability would slow down the others.
I don’t order much from Amazon but frequently I get a book and a USB drive or something else and it’s shipped in two boxes despite my preference for bundling into as few parcels as possible likely because of multiple warehouses
Netflix would not remotely resemble its current form and likely would have been acquired years ago if they did not pivot to their own content. Switching to their own content required and still requires huge amounts of money; est. 17bn last year[0]. Additionally, the gross profit number is a flawed number for many reasons; try looking at operating or net income or anything farther down the income statement from basic revenue. Netflix has no option but to finance content spend with debt as they do not generate enough FCF to cover content spend and will quickly fall behind competitors if they don't.
>Netflix would not remotely resemble its current form and likely would have been acquired years ago if they did not pivot to their own content.
You can't acquire a private company unless they're willing to sell.
>Switching to their own content required and still requires huge amounts of money; est. 17bn last year[0].
I don't follow your point? Private companies can take a loan just as easily as public. If they were unable to attain the financing they wanted, they'd still have plenty of their own content, just not as much.
>Additionally, the gross profit number is a flawed number for many reasons; try looking at operating or net income or anything farther down the income statement from basic revenue. Netflix has no option but to finance content spend with debt as they do not generate enough FCF to cover content spend and will quickly fall behind competitors if they don't.
I'd suggest you do the same. Their cash balance increased from $5 billion to $8 billion last year. They took out "debt" to finance their movies because money is cheap right now. Nothing they've done required them being a public company, and nothing you've shown makes me believe they couldn't be in exactly the same position they currently are as a private company. They didn't even start borrowing money of significance until 2012, I still don't believe for a second they'd be "bankrupt" as a a private company.
> I don't follow your point? Private companies can take a loan just as easily as public. If they were unable to attain the financing they wanted, they'd still have plenty of their own content, just not as much.
Private companies face a higher cost of capital than equivalent public companies and are unable to borrow as much money as public companies are able to. This is basic finance 101 stuff. Without debt financing, they would not have been able to begin their pivot when they needed to. Netflix is able to borrow at much lower rates than a company with the same financials solely because they are a large public company. Google "equity cushion" if you're unfamiliar with the term.
> I'd suggest you do the same. Their cash balance increased from $5 billion to $8 billion last year. They took out "debt" to finance their movies because money is cheap right now. Nothing they've done required them being a public company, and nothing you've shown makes me believe they couldn't be in exactly the same position they currently are as a private company.
Yes, Netflix is doing much better financially over the past few years and especially in the past year given the pandemic. I don't see how their cash balance is relevant in the face of content spend 2-3x that much. The initial contention was over content spend and a misleading gross profit number.
>They didn't even start borrowing money of significance until 2012, I still don't believe for a second they'd be "bankrupt" as a a private company.
They started borrowing when they needed to pivot to their own content, had to do so at pretty high rates, and luckily succeeded in their pivot.
Throughout this, I don't see any acknowledgement of where streaming was back then and how competitive the space has become since then. Netflix needs to spend on content or it will get left behind. A smaller Netflix offers no competitive edge right now and a smaller Netflix years ago would have been held hostage by content owners while being unable to have any real control over sub pricing; see poorly handled rate increases years ago.
>Private companies face a higher cost of capital than equivalent public companies and are unable to borrow as much money as public companies are able to. This is basic finance 101 stuff. Without debt financing, they would not have been able to begin their pivot when they needed to. Netflix is able to borrow at much lower rates than a company with the same financials solely because they are a large public company. Google "equity cushion" if you're unfamiliar with the term.
I guess I took a different finance 101 than you did - it was at an accredited university though, so I'm fairly certain they weren't making things up as we went. I've literally never heard of a public company being able to borrow more because they were public. Quite the opposite actually, as a private company with a solid financial track record isn't subject to the whims of shareholders and short-term quarterly-returns based internal investment.
Now if you're pets.com that is burning through cash like it's water in the hopes of making money 20 years down the road... that's a different story. That's also not Netflix.
Private companies face a higher cost of capital than equivalent public companies
Why is that? (Sorry, I never took finance 101.) Is it because public companies can more easily put up corporate ownership as collateral for the loan? Or because of the extra scrutiny they get from the SEC?
Oh good, a few years will rebalance everything. Honestly the point I was making was that the wealthy will continue to pursue ways to maintain a larger and larger wealth gap as a matter of self-interest.
> Initial Disclosure: This report represents our opinion, and we encourage every reader to do their own due diligence. Please see our full disclaimer at the bottom of the report. We have no position (short or long) in Clover Health because we think in this moment for public markets, it is more important for people to understand the role short sellers play in exposing fraud and corporate malfeasance. For more on that discussion, see our conclusion. For members of the media who wish to independently corroborate our work, please contact us for information on sources on condition that their anonymity is maintained unless they explicitly agree to go on-record.
Relevant text: Oracle is implementing a more flexible employee work location policy and has changed its Corporate Headquarters from Redwood City, California to Austin, Texas. We believe these moves best position Oracle for growth and provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work. Depending on their role, this means that many of our employees can choose their office location as well as continue to work from home part time or all of the time. In addition, we will continue to support major hubs for Oracle around the world, including those in the United States such as Redwood City, Austin, Santa Monica, Seattle, Denver, Orlando and Burlington, among others, and we expect to add other locations over time. By implementing a more modern approach to work, we expect to further improve our employees’ quality of life and quality of output.
How does labor law impact anything when everyone is WFH ? Also, do taxes really have anything to do with your HQ location ? All corporations are registered in Delaware.
And many of those taxes are based on things like now many distinct offices you have for employees. This is one of the reasons we saw the death of private offices and a shift to the whole open workspace bullshit. Because you’d get taxed per office, whether it was being used 5 days a week or not.
Do you mean number of private workspaces that are called an “office” in a building affects how taxes are calculated? So reconfiguring the floors in a corporate building might affect how they file taxes? I’ve never heard of that before...
Yes. And it can be impacted at a municipality level, as well as a state or county level too. So the city of Seattle might have a different way they tax these things than the city of Redmond, in addition to whatever taxes are levied by King County or Washington State.
ETA: there are very real reasons big companies have reconfigured workspaces and it isn’t about worker efficiency studies or even fitting more people into a space, but about taxes.
This isn't true. The move to the open office was NOT because of a city tax on the number of private offices. For this to be remotely true someone would need to audit each building / floor.
Could you point to a government website with additional information?
Look up B&O taxes. There’s often a square footage requirement to it and depending on where you are, there can be a surcharge or additional fee for what they deem distinct workspaces. So if it has a door, that’s a new place. Whereas open and more disparate spaces do not. Again, all of this is extremely dependent on where you operate and can vary based on what type of business you’re in, etc. etc.
I wish I had more direct information. I was informed of this by a tax attorney, when I was complaining about how our shared employer was shifting away from individual offices, which had been a hallmark of the company and corporate culture. He told me that there had been some changes to the local B&O tax law that helped make the argument to to shared/team/open spaces. I did some research and found he was right, though again, the specifics are going to differ depending on where you are, what business you’re in, the size of the business, etc.
You're talking about the employee while the GP is talking about the employer. Both have their income (personal or corporate) taxes, so both statements are true.
I am not a tax attorney obviously, but the information I've been given (by many sources) is that this year I'll pay taxes for the state in which my employer resides, not where I've been living. I think the decider is "state in which you work", which is what I meant by "local office" (i.e. I'm still considered to "work" in NY).
New York is attempting to do that, true. Usually it is your state of residence and the state in which you physically work that tax you (both, if they are different), but New York’s novel claim is unlikely to succeed for work by non-NY residents that doesn't occur in NY.
NY’s position right now is ridiculous. I hope the courts rule that NY has no right to tax income for someone who hasn’t stepped foot in NY since March.
Usually, the place of the employees residence and the physical worksite; rules for interstate travel for work and state income tax are different per state, with some applying tax on the first day of work in the state, others having a number of days threshold.
The employer’s HQ generally has no effect, independently of it being a worksite for many employees.
How do you get health insurance? Does your company have an office in your state? If not, do they give you Californi-based coverage, with most providers being out-of-network?
(I am in the same position, working in not-CA for an employer HQ'd in CA.)
> How do you get health insurance?
Through my employer, like many employees.
> Does your company have an office in your state?
Yes, though I've not seen the inside of it with my eyes since March.
> If not, do they give you Californi-based coverage, with most providers being out-of-network?
While your question was conditional on the office, no, the CA-specific health plans are only available for CA employees. Non-CA employees have a different set of options. (Sadly: I was rather fond of Kaiser.)
I was asking because my son works for a tech company and was told that he could only move to states where they had an office, because that's where the company already has health coverage.
Since insurance doesn't cross state lines, if had wanted to relocate to South Dakota they would have to get him coverage with Blue Cross of South Dakota (or whichever carrier) which would require cost and administrative effort. Maybe they just didn't want to go through the trouble for one employee.
I don't think this is true. Employees pay taxes based on residency requirement. So if you are not a resident of CA, you don't pay taxes, regardless of where your HQ is
If California can claim the work was done in or for California. They’ll tax it. If you work remote from Texas but hr says your desk is in California. You owe California taxes.
This is categorically false. If you're a Texas resident, working for a California based company, but doing your work remotely in Texas, you absolutely do not owe taxes in California.
The concept of "work done for California" does not exist. If the work is done in Texas (at your house), you pay Texas taxes (no income tax).
He's right when he says that your desk location (your main office, not necessarily HQ) according to HR is what matters. That's where your withholdings go. You could maybe fight with the State of California for the refund next year, but in the meantime you'll pay taxes in the state if your paycheck says so. If your desk is in NYC, but live in CT or NJ, you'll pay taxes in two states, even if you haven't set foot in your office for months. You can try changing your residency to e.g. Texas as you say, getting assigned by HR to a new office or marked as remote, but you can bet that the original state will try everything in their book to keep some of your money.
Some states are more aggressive than others. Although you're right in general, there is actually a history of CA going aggressively after the money of residents of other states, like the screenwriter in AZ that did a lot of work for a California customer: https://ota.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/54/2019/08/18032...
>He's right when he says that your desk location (your main office, not necessarily HQ) according to HR is what matters.
Incorrect, you kind of have this backwards. If you're a resident in another state (Texas), and are conducting work in that state (Texas, home office), then HR has to make sure they're conforming to the labor laws of that state (Texas), not the state of the office where you used to work (California).
>You could maybe fight with the State of California for the refund next year, but in the meantime you'll pay taxes in the state if your paycheck says so.
That's why it's pertinent to change your residency as soon as you move, and then update HR the same day. Else you're fighting an uphill battle for no reason.
>If your desk is in NYC, but live in CT or NJ, you'll pay taxes in two states, even if you haven't set foot in your office for months.
No longer true if you no longer actually work there.
>You can try changing your residency to e.g. Texas as you say, getting assigned by HR to a new office or marked as remote, but you can bet that the original state will try everything in their book to keep some of your money.
And you can give them the middle finger because they're wrong. Spending $300 to get your taxes prepped by a CPA will stop 99% of this shenanigans.
>Although you're right in general, there is actually a history of CA going aggressively after the money of residents of other states, like the screenwriter in AZ that did a lot of work for a California customer
There is some nuance to this. CA deliberately defines anybody who is in CA "other than for a transitory purpose" as a CA resident (for tax purposes). So if you happen to reside in TX but come to Redwood City for a couple weeks and work there, for example, CA can come after you. I am fairly certain this will happen more often once increasing numbers of people vote with their feet.
Even this is not entirely correct. They do not consider you a CA resident, but they consider the income you make while (more than transiently) in the state taxable.
Many states have similar clauses (NY, NJ, etc.), CA is not unique in this aspect.
CA is actually more generous than a number of states, which do not exempt transitory presence for work, so if you do earn any money at all for work while in the state you owe income taxes (and your employer is obligated to withhold for the State.)
This is simply false. I’ve lived in California, been hired for a California company, allowed to work from home, and moved out of state.
The moment I left California the state I paid income tax to changed.
Think of it this way: all of the government services I use are in the state I reside in. I use literally $0 in California services. Not police, not fire department, not roads: nada.
California had a reputation for being very strict about whether you are a “resident.” But it’s not infinite.
Once you’re gone, they can’t tax you.
There are some exceptions for people who live near in a neighboring state, but work physically in California.
No, you only pay for time worked in CA. The only exception I found are options/RSUs granted in CA and vested after you've left, these may be taxed in proportion to the time originally worked in CA after the grant.
This can also paint a target on non TX workers. I have lived through that. HQ of a company I worked for in the past moved to TX and anyone that was not willing to relocate was part of the layoffs. Of course, it didn't start off that way. People were initially told they would be fine where they were. Our California office went from several hundred to six people.
Interesting this sentence is at the end of this 40+ page document under the section "Other Information". The very first page says 2300 Oracle Way Austin, Texas but their previous quarterly reports shows 500 Oracle Parkway Redwood City, California
Amazon.com Inc., American Express Co., Daimler AG and Stripe Inc. are among those joining a new GitHub program that will let companies directly fund open-source projects and software developers that are key to their businesses.
it doesn’t have anything to do with developing an app and everything to do with HBO insisting on how their content is distributed. they recently reached a deal with amazon and i believe part of the deal was pulling the legacy HBO Now app and only allowing HBO Max. they want Max to be the front facing brand
In a lot of cases, reporters do not have access to AUM or want to extrapolate from potentially misleading sources in order to construct a percentage return that does not exist publicly. You don't see reporters attempt to extrapolate dollar returns from percentage ones when percentage ones are all that are available; even if dollar returns might make a better headline like you claim. A headline with an extrapolated percentage return would have to be phrased in an awkward manner like "could be down as much as" and an editor is not going to greenlight that. This isn't even broaching the subject of gross vs net percentage returns which isn't possible to succinctly address in a mere headline.
