
Inside an Amazon Fulfillment Center in Poland [video] - thedogeye
http://wtkplay.pl/video-id-14147-zobacz_jak_w_srodku_wyglada_centrum_amazona_w_sadach
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comboy
Well, that didn't make a great impression on me. I guess they were filming it
right after the opening, so most people were still learning the job.

I'm surprised now that they have these robots[1] already designed and tested
it's still more efficient for them to hire humans to walk around instead.

[1] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtBa9yVZBJM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtBa9yVZBJM)

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moonchrome
Average wage in Poland is 634,49€/month (>4€/hr), minimum wage is ~3€/hr so I
assume labor still compares positively to automation cost.

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xyzzyz
Minimum wage in Poland is actually around 2.50 EUR/hr, and average wage is
around 5.70 EUR/hr (median is considerably lower, but statistics office hasn't
published it in a while). Amazon pays around 3.30 EUR/hr.

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moonchrome
Do you mind me asking - what's the standard rate for developers there
(assuming you are in the field/scene) ? Also what's developer availability -
do most young people just move to Western Europe or do they stick around in
programming ?

Poland is interesting to me - it's large enough that you can have a decently
sized pool of people to recruit from (unlike smaller EU countries like mine -
Croatia), you also seem to have OK taxes. Not sure what the regulatory/legal
system looks like but since I haven't heard anything horrible I'll assume same
or better than the rest of Central/Eastern Europe.

You have very low cost of living compared to Western Europe, it seems like it
would be the ideal place to create start up incubators in EU.

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xyzzyz
There is no standard rate, the pay scale is extremely wide. You can easily
find people who'll churn out shitty PHP for 700 EUR/mo. It's not much harder
to find someone who has considerably more skill and experience, and will
require at least twice that. Highly skilled people who know their worth won't
work for less than 2500 EUR/mo, and have no trouble finding employers who'll
pay them that much, or more. Google pays around 3500 EUR/mo for new grads. All
of these are gross numbers, and refer to Warsaw market. For other cities,
there are fewer candidates, and salaries are 20-30% lower.

Overall though I'd say that developers here don't know how much they're worth,
and sadly most employers get away with paying them less than they should. The
reason it happens is that everyone else in other occupations are paid even
less, so developers feel like they have it good, even though they can easily
have it better.

As for the regulatory/legal system, there are some issues, but I don't think
it's any better or worse than anywhere else. There are some incubators here,
Google has opened Campus[1] just last week, but I think the biggest issue for
wannabe-unicorns here is lack of the access to capital. Some of my friends
bootstrapped their companies though, and it worked out quite well for them.

[1] - [https://www.campus.co/warsaw/en](https://www.campus.co/warsaw/en)

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moonchrome
Sounds similarly to local market (although PHP market seems to be dying down)
except that top programmers around here don't stick around because highest tax
bracket kicks in at slightly above 1k€ net - meaning employer has to pay 2.8k€
for 1.5k€ salary so you end up getting more money even in more expensive
countries working for same gross income :D

But thanks for the reply !

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nodesocket
I wonder if US facilities operate the same? I'm actually surprised this video
is public, since it contains core (? confidential ?) business operations and
processes. Usually Amazon is super secretive about their special sauce.

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mdlowman
If you want to, you can just go visit an FC and get a tour, you know. It's not
exactly closed.

[http://www.amazon.com/b?node=8947548011](http://www.amazon.com/b?node=8947548011)

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radoslawc
"Work hard. Have fun. Make history" this was cringe worthy, like from Veridian
Dynamics commercials
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHuVS5OAo6k&list=PLFA32C1347...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHuVS5OAo6k&list=PLFA32C1347789C3D0))
but irl not comedy show

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timothybone
I felt like I was watching a visual piece of software.

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hengheng
Amazing how much of the work isn't yet automated.

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toomuchtodo
They're working on it:
[https://www.amazonrobotics.com/](https://www.amazonrobotics.com/)

