Amazon
Amazon brought back its promotion that'll allow you to thank your delivery driver this holiday season.
If you're pleased with your ride, you can participate by typing "Thank my Driver" into the search bar of your Amazon app or asking Alexa to "thank my driver." You'll have to thank them within 14 days of your last delivery.
It's already got a lot of traction in 2024.
The "Thank My Driver" promotion began on December 4 this year, and Amazon tipped drivers $5 for the first 2 million thank-yous from US customers.
Amazon hit the 2-million limit within six days. However, there are still ways to help your delivery person earn extra cash.
Similar to 2023, the company is offering "additional awards" for drivers who receive praise for their deliveries, according to a press release from Amazon.
Here's what Amazon is offering: "$100 each for the 1,000 most-thanked drivers each day through the rest of December; $10,000 for the seven top-thanked drivers each week until the end of December."
Meanwhile, the seven most-thanked Amazon drivers from December 4 to December 31 will receive $25,000 plus an extra $25,000 to be donated to the charity of their choice.
Steven Tweedie/Business Insider
"Treat your customers like family, and they will do the same to you," driver Andrew Shearouse, one of the 2023 recipients of the $25,000 tip, said.
Only US-based drivers are eligible, and they must be an Amazon Flex partner, drive for a delivery service partner, or be a hub delivery associate. A delivery driver can only be thanked once per delivery. Amazon package deliveries from the Post Office and companies like UPS aren't eligible for the extra rewards.
Those looking for other ways to thank their delivery people can check TikTok, where creators are posting about the care packages they leave on their doorstep β especially during the busy holiday delivery season.
During the holiday season, Amazon drivers' shifts can be as long as 10 hours β and a serious workout. There are some Amazon drivers who earn $18 an hour compared to full-time UPS drivers who earn an average total compensation package of $145,000 per year, according to UPS.
In September, Amazon announced that it will spend $2.1 billion to give its delivery drivers a pay raise. Although the exact rate depends on location, the boost may bump drivers' pay to a national average of $22 an hour.
Prime Video
"Beast Games," the game show on Amazon Prime Video from MrBeast, debuted Thursday, and I watched along with my elementary-aged son. As an adult, I enjoyed the spectacle and found the show highly watchable. But as a parent, I'm not sure I liked the message about money it was imparting to my young ward.
Elementary-school-aged kids, whether or not they're allowed to watch YouTube, all know who MrBeast is. He's a superstar to Gen Alpha. His candy bars are on grocery-store shelves, and his specter hangs over playgrounds and lunchrooms.
(My colleague reports that his teenage son says MrBeast isn't quite as cool in high schools anymore, perhaps because he's seen as being for little kids.)
Like most parents, I want to teach my kids the value of a dollar: that money comes from hard work and that saving and budgeting are important.
"Beast Games" flies in the face of all that. Money is tossed around as this strange easy-come, easy-go object. It opens with MrBeast standing on a pyramid of cash (allegedly the full $5 million prize in stacks of bills). We are repeatedly told this is the largest cash prize ever in a game show.
The show's premise is that a group of contestants will compete in challenges to win that big prize β a season-long version of some of his popular YouTube videos.
Later in the season there will be physical challenges (we see preview clips of people pulling a monster truck), but in this first episode the games are almost all psychological tests.
This first series of minigames aims to winnow the contestant pool to 500 people from 1,000. The games are variations on the prisoner's dilemma, pitting what's good for an individual against what's good for the group.
In the first game, MrBeast makes this offer: Anyone who quits the game immediately can share a pot of money β but the pot gets smaller as more people choose to take the early out. In another game, each team of about 100 people must have one person sacrifice themselves and leave the game with no prize money at all β or else the whole team is eliminated. People are sobbing, yelling at each other to be the ones to quit.
It's a fascinating challenge to watch as an adult. But I'm not sure a kid can really understand what's going on β the wrenching pain of people losing what they thought could be a chance to pay off loans or buy a home.
In the game, money is an object to build into pyramids or toss around in bags β it's funny money; it doesn't feel real.
Representatives for MrBeast declined to comment for this story.
Other game shows have cash prizes,Β even kid-friendly ones like "Is It Cake?" or even the old "Double Dare" on Nickelodeon. But on other shows, the prize is an exciting treat at the end β it isn't the whole point of the show.
In "Beast Games," money is the point β and even the games themselves are about money. I'm not sure I like what subtle message that's sending to young minds not old enough to earn a real paycheck.
Update: December 20, 2024 β MrBeast representatives declined to comment when contacted by BI; the story has been updated reflecting that.
AP Photo/ Stefan Jeremiah
Amazon workers at seven Amazon fulfillment centers went on strike Thursday, though the retailer said it wasn't seeing effects on its holiday delivery operations.
The workers are walking off the job after Amazon refused to bargain with them over a contract, according to a statement from the Teamsters, which represents the employees.
The strike will affect three Amazon fulfillment centers in Southern California as well as one each in New York, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Illinois, according to the Teamsters. The union said it will also set up picket lines at other Amazon facilities.
The action comes in the middle of the key holiday shopping season. Amazon's highest quarterly revenue has historically come during the final three months of the year. This year, that period included the company's October Prime Day as well as deals for Black Friday.
"If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon's insatiable greed," Sean O'Brien, general president of the Teamsters, said in the statement.
O'Brien said that the Teamsters "gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members."
"They ignored it," he added.
An Amazon spokesperson said Thursday morning that the company hasn't seen its operations affected by the strike.
Spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a statement that the Teamsters recruited non-employees to participate in the strike and intimidate Amazon employees. When Business Insider asked for evidence of those claims, an Amazon spokesperson said, "We know our employees, and we know they are not out there. Our employees repeatedly claim to management that they experience harassment from activists."
"We appreciate all our team's great work to serve their customers and communities, and are continuing to focus on getting customers their holiday orders," Nantel said.
Workers at some Starbucks stores were also preparing for a potential strike this week. On Tuesday, a union representing about 10,000 baristas said its members had voted to authorize a strike, though negotiations with Starbucks have continued and no strike date has been set.
Do you work for Amazon and have a story idea to share? Reach out to this reporter at [email protected]
Amazon workers at seven warehouses walked out Thursday morning, launching a strike ahead of the holidays after Amazon failed to meet a bargaining deadline set by the Teamsters union representing the workers.
In a press release, Teamsters declared it "the largest strike against Amazon in US history." Teamsters general president, Sean O'Brien, warned shoppers of potential delays, saying "you can blame Amazonβs insatiable greed."
"We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it," OβBrien said. "These greedy executives had every chance to show decency and respect for the people who make their obscene profits possible. Instead, theyβve pushed workers to the limit and now theyβre paying the price. This strike is on them."
Β© AdrianHancu | iStock Editorial / Getty Images Plus
AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images
Documents obtained by Business Insider reveal the terms that contestants of MrBeast's competition show, "Beast Games," were asked to agree to during a preliminary round.
The terms prohibit contestants from disclosing information about the show, which debuts Thursday on Amazon Prime Video. Contestants who break the agreement prior to the last episode airing must pay the producer and network $500,000 for each breach. After the last episode airs, each breach would cost contestants $100,000, the documents said.
The documents also ask contestants to agree that their portrayal in the program may be "disparaging, defamatory, embarrassing, or of an otherwise unfavorable nature," and may expose them to "public ridicule, humiliation, or condemnation."
Daniel J. Ain, an entertainment attorney at RPJ Law, said the terms are largely standard for a competition show, but some β like the threat of a $500,000 charge for each breach β are particularly expansive.
"The producers use every available tool to give them ultimate flexibility to make the show and protect themselves from liability," Ain told BI, calling the documents a "contestant agreement on steroids."
"Beast Games" is a 10-episode physical competition show in which contestants compete for a $5 million prize. YouTube's top star β whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson β is the host.
The show has attracted some controversy ahead of its release. A New York Times report in August cited "over a dozen" participants who said they didn't receive enough food or medical care during the preliminary round of competition in Las Vegas.
The documents obtained by Business Insider relate to the Las Vegas taping, where over 2,000 contestants participated in physical challenges designed to see who would make the show's official production round in Toronto.
The documents include information about the show, a contestant questionnaire form, and an outline of the show's official rules and protocols. By signing the form, contestants gave full consent to the use of hidden cameras and recording devices, gave producers full discretion to edit footage, and agreed to participate for no money. Potential prizes were the only form of compensation.
A person close to the production characterized the Las Vegas production as a "promo shoot" for the show and said Amazon wasn't involved. Amazon did not respond to a request for comment from BI.
Read 24 pages of the documents below:
Note: BI omitted some pages from the document that included the contestant's personal information and a few pages with minimal or repeated information.
Ezra Bailey
Executives at major companies are referencing a specific term to hedge when asked by employees if they plan to follow in Amazon's footsteps and implement a return to 5 days a week in the office.
That word? Productivity.
While Amazon has been the most high-profile example this year of a full return to office policy, set to go into effect in January, telecom giant AT&T has also elected to double down on in-person work with a similar 5-day policy, Business Insider first reported.
In the wake of Amazon's announcement, executives at both Google and Microsoft, which require employees to be in the office at least 3 days a week, have fielded questions from staff wondering if the days of hybrid work are numbered.
Microsoft's executive vice president of cloud and AI, Scott Guthrie, said the company wouldn't change the hybrid work policy unless it noticed a drop in productivity, BI reported in September.
In October, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company had no plans to order employees back to the office, so long as employees remain productive during their at-home work days, BI previously reported.
Over at Meta, Mark Zuckerberg said last year that "early analysis of performance data," indicated productivity increases for early-career engineers in the office at least 3 days a week. A few months later, the company announced it was requiring employees to return to the office 3 days a week.
Executives at Dell called the company's sales team back to the office 5 days a week starting at the end of September, writing in a memo, "Our data shows that sales teams are more productive when onsite."
Though Amazon did not explicitly name productivity as a reason for its full return to the office, CEO Andy Jassy emphasized a similar term: effectiveness.
Being back in person 5 days a week makes it "easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective; teaching and learning from one another are more seamless; and, teams tend to be better connected to one another," he wrote at the time.
For those committing to a full return to office, preparing campuses for the influx of employees in the new year is its own challenge. Amazon has since delayed the announced January 2 effective date of the new mandate for some employees because it doesn't have enough office space in some locations, BI reported earlier this month.
As CEOs and company leaders keep an eye on how employees in remote or hybrid setups perform, various studies since the onset of the pandemic have attempted to measure and compare the productivity of employees who work at home and in-office. Research studies have produced conflicting results, further complicated by the matter of how best to define or measure productivity.
Goldman Sachs, which has a 5-day-in-office policy, reviewed several analyses that used different ways of evaluating changes in work-from-home productivity, from call-center workers who were randomly chosen to work from home to comparing the productivity of randomly assigned remote workers with their in-office peers.
In short, it's hard to say for sure, and executives are deciding what their long-term setup will be after a year in which some of the world's biggest companies put a renewed focus on being "lean" and "efficient."
Meanwhile, some employees have returned to commuting in (sometimes "coffee-badging" in and returning home), others have relocated to comply with a policy change, and some have resigned to pursue a hybrid or fully remote opportunity. As companies tighten their belts and conduct layoffs, other workers have taken to workplace forums to wonder if some of the RTO mandates have been a possible "quiet layoffs" tactic.
As more major global companies revisit their policies and make changes, CEOs are likely to face more questions on the topic going into the new year.
For some, the answer is simple: Stay productive and we'll stay flexible.
Amazon announced in September that it will require workers to be in the office five days a week starting in January. Employee backlash ensued, not just because return-to-office (RTO) mandates can be unpopular but also because Amazon is using some of the worst strategies for issuing RTO mandates.
Ahead of the mandate, Amazon had been letting many employees work remotely for two days a week, with a smaller number of workers being totally remote. But despite saying that employees would have to commute five days per week, the conglomerate doesnβt have enough office space to accommodate over 350,000 employees. Personnel in βat least seven cities,β including Phoenix and Austin, Texas, have had their RTO dates delayed until after January, Bloomberg reported today, citing βpeople familiar with the situation." Employees in Dallas wonβt have enough space until March or April, and an office in New York City wonβt have sufficient space until May, per Bloomberg's sources.
RTO dates are also delayed in Atlanta, Houston, and Nashville, Tennessee, Business Insider reported this week,Β citing βinternal Amazon notifications.β
Β© Getty
Nathan Stirk/Getty Images
In September, Amazon mandated corporate workers return to the office five days a week beginning January 2.
In December, Business Insider first reported that AT&T is following suit and expecting employees to be in the office 40 hours a week starting in the new year.
The two business giants are just one of the many companies calling their employees back to the office following the pandemic as COVID-19 restrictions have eased.
The Washington Post, which is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, told employees this week they would be required to return to the office five days a week, according to a memo obtained by Business Insider.
Other major employers, including JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, have also abandoned the hybrid attendance policy they adopted during the pandemic and instead implemented full return-to-office mandates.
Several executives and leaders have said they believe productivity increases when workers are in the office together, while others hope to increase in-person collaboration. Even some CEOs who previously praised the flexibility of remote work have started backpedaling, pressuring workers to comply with RTO mandates with threats to track attendance or even fire employees who don't comply.
Here's a list, in alphabetical order, of major companies requiring employees to return to offices. Business Insider will update this list regularly.
CEO Andy Jassy wrote in a September 16 memo that Amazon would be pulling the plug on remote work starting next year.
"We've decided that we're going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID," Jassy said. "When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant."
The CEO cited easier employee collaboration and connection and said in-person work would strengthen the company's culture, echoing hisΒ February 2023 memo, which mandated employeesΒ spend at least three days a week in the office.
Not everyone agrees. Some Amazon employees have taken to an internal Slack channel to criticize the new RTO policy, Business Insider's Ashley Stewart first reported, with one staffer writing that it is "significantly more strict and out of its mind" than pre-Covid operations.
"This is not 'going back' to how it was before," they wrote. "It's just going backwards."
The critical reaction is reminiscent of employees' response to last year's surprise return-to-office rule. Thousands of Amazon workers joined a Slack channel to share their thoughts, with some even organizing to file a petition against the change.
In August 2022, Apple's senior leaders told workers they had to return to the office at least three days a week after previously requiring two days a week. CEO Tim Cook said the decision was meant to restore "in-person collaboration." Some employees fought back and issued a petition shortly after the announcement, arguing that staffers can do "exceptional work" from home.
Despite the pushback, Apple's hybrid work program launched the following month and is still in place.
AT&T confirmed to Business Insider that it's requiring all office employees to work on-site five days a week starting in January.
The change follows about a year of AT&T accommodating a hybrid schedule in its widely publicized office push.
"The majority of our employees and leaders never stopped working on location for the full work week β including during the pandemic," a spokesperson for the telecom giant told BI.
AT&T told BI it's updating its facilities amid the policy change.
"As we continue to evolve our model, we are enhancing our facilities and workspaces, adapting our benefits programs, and incorporating best practices to ensure our employees are best equipped to serve our customers," the spokesperson added.
Last year, BlackRock mandated employees return to the office four days a week. The investment firm, which is headquartered in New York City, intended to bring employees into its then newly leased office space β which spans 1 million square feet across 15 floors, according to Hudson Yards.
In a May 2023 memo sent by the company's COO, Rob Goldstein, and the head of human resources, Caroline Heller, the execs wrote: "Career development happens in teaching moments between team members, and it is accelerated during market-moving moments, when we step up and get into the mix. All of this requires us to be together in the office."
Additionally, the memo notified staffers that the firm is giving them the opportunity to work remotely for two weeks during a time period that is relevant in their country, in an effort to offer "seasonal flexibility."
The fast-food chain announced last summer that corporate workers work in the office four days a week, Bloomberg reported. Chipotle had previously required workers to show up three days a week, according to the report.
Citigroup asked its 600 US workers, who were previously eligible to work remotely, to return to the office full-time, Bloomberg reported. In a memo released by the investment firm in May, the majority of staff are reportedly still able to work a hybrid schedule, with up to two days a week outside the office.
HSBC Holding Plc and Barclays Plc also followed suit, mandating workers to come into the office five days a week, according to the report.
Vaccinated Citigroup employees across the US were asked to return to the office for at least two days a week in March 2022, an internal memo obtained by Reuters said.
Dell told its sales staff to return to the office five days a week starting on September 30. Previously, the company let US employees pick between working remotely or following a hybrid schedule with about three days a week in the office.
September's sales-team mandate came with just a few days' notice, sending employees with kids into a hurry to find childcare, Business Insider reported.
In a January 2023 memo obtained by Business Insider, CEO Bob Iger told workers that starting that March, any Disney staff member working "in a hybrid fashion" would need to return to Disney's offices four days a week.
In response, over 2,300 employees signed a petition asking Iger to reconsider the mandate.
"This policy will slow, or even reverse, our post-COVID recovery and growth by creating critical resource shortages and causing irreplaceable institutional knowledge loss," signees wrote, according to The Washington Post.
In March 2022, CEO David Solomon told Fortune that the company was asking employees to return to the office five days a week. Seven months later, he told CNBC that about 65% of staffers were working in the office.
However, some staff have failed to follow the policy a year into its implementation, causing senior managers to become frustrated and Goldman Sachs to further crack down on employees to return to the office full-time.
In March 2022, Google employees in the San Francisco Bay Area and "several other US locations" were told to return to the office for at least three days a week starting the following month.
Last year, however, the company tightened RTO expectations, telling staff in an email that office attendance would factor into their performance reviews.
Google's Chief People Officer Fiona Cicconi told workers in the memo that requests to work remotely full time will now be considered "by exception only."
Some employees expressed feeling "frustrated" with the new policy. One staffer previously told Business Insider, "We don't like being micromanaged like school kids."
IBM has made its feelings on in-person work strictly clear β telling managers to either come into offices or get out.
The company asked all its US managers to report to an office or client location at least three days a week, according to a January memo viewed by Bloomberg.
A source told the outlet that staff would have to live within 50 miles of an IBM office or client location. The memo reportedly told employees they had until August to complete their relocation arrangements, and those who were unable to comply with the new policy must "separate from IBM."
CEO Arvind Krishna previously told the news outlet that employees' careers could suffer if they work from home. He said that although he wasn't forcing his own staffers back to the office, he thought remote workers may struggle to get promotions.
In April 2023, JPMorgan announced to employees in a memo that all managing directors must work in the office five days a week. The memo also reminded other workers of the current policy of working in-person a minimum of three days a week.
Despite some pushback from employees, CEO Jamie Dimon doubled down on the policy, saying disgruntled workers can choose to go elsewhere.
"I completely understand why someone doesn't want to commute an hour and a half every day, totally got it," he told The Economist. "Doesn't mean they have to have a job here either."
The company has also been collecting data on staff activity, including tracking attendance.
Meta updated its remote work policies in September 2023, requiring employees to head into the office three days a week.
It had also stopped offering remote work in new job listings. People familiar with the company previously told BI that hiring managers could no longer post new jobs that list the work location as "remote" or outside of an existing office.
The company doubled down on its RTO efforts in June of this year, telling workers that their attendance would be tracked daily and failure to comply could lead to termination.
However, some employees returning to the office said they were met with a lack of space and privacy, with one worker calling the mandate "a mess."
In April last year, real estate company Redfin announced an updated return-to-office policy via a memo from CEO Glenn Kelman.
The memo noted that starting July 2023, Redfin would require "headquarters employees" who live within 20 miles of the company's Seattle, San Francisco, and Frisco offices to work from the office for a full day on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Those who live beyond the 20-mile radius are required to visit the office in-person once a quarter for a day or more of meetings, the company said.
In order to hold employees accountable, the memo included a "no-exceptions" section, reading that "to determine your distance from an office, we'll use Google Maps, with the distance from your home address measured in miles driven over roads by car."
Salesforce told employees in an internal memo seen by The San Francisco Standard that the majority of workers have to be in an office four to five days a week as of October 1.
The new policy is mandated for select staff in sales, workplace services, data center engineering, and on-site support technicians, according to the memo.
Early last year, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff revised the company's annual strategic plan, including return-to-office mandates, according to a draft shared in an internal Slack message viewed by Business Insider.
The updated draft return-to-office policy required nonremote employees to work three days a week in the office and employees in "non-remote" and "customer-facing" roles to work four days a week. Engineers must work from the office 10 days per quarter, down from 20 in the initial draft, which was updated based on employee feedback.
Snap implemented a new mandate in September 2023, requiring employees to work in an office at least four days a week. The change represented a shift from the company's former "remote first" policy, which allowed employees to work from home or elsewhere.
Employees previously told BI that some managers told them the company is able to track workers' WiFi connections to see who is complying.
In a January 2023 memo to corporate staffers, then-CEO Howard Schultz said employees within commuting distance would be required to return to the office at least three days a week.
Schultz said some staff had failed to "meet their minimum promise of one day a week" and also pointed out that Starbucks baristas didn't have the "privilege" of working from home. The executive had previously said he "pleaded" with workers to come back to the office.
Starbucks employees responded by signing an open letter protesting the company's return-to-office mandate.
In September, former Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol took over as CEO of the coffee chain.
In October, the company threatened to fire staff if they did not comply with the RTO policy, Bloomberg first reported, citing an internal memo.
Beginning in January, the company plans to initiate a "standardized process" to hold workers accountable to the hybrid schedule at the team level, where consequences will cover "up to, and including, separation," according to the email obtained by Bloomberg.
Employees, however, may request exemptions due to physical or mental medical reasons.
In June 2022, Tesla employees were notified of a mandatory return-to-office policy.
The email from Elon Musk included wording such as "If you don't show up, we will assume you have resigned," and noted that everyone at Tesla must work from the office at least 40 hours a week.
Musk, who has called remote work "morally wrong," nodded to his frequent presence at Tesla factories as the reason for the business' success. "If I had not done that, Tesla would long ago have gone bankrupt," he wrote in the email.
In September, Ubisoft, the France-based maker of the popular "Assassin's Creed" and "Far Cry" video game series, ordered its staff worldwide to return to the office three days a week.
French workers at the video game maker went on strike on October 15 over the RTO mandate.
After buying X, formerly Twitter, in 2022, Musk told employees that not showing up to an office when they're able to was the same as a resignation.
Musk also told staffers in an email that remote work was no longer allowed and that employees were expected to be in the office for at least 40 hours a week unless given explicit approval to work elsewhere.
In 2023, X, then Twitter, National Labor Relations Board filed a formal complaint saying that X had illegally fired an employee who complained about Musk's RTO policy.
The complaint said that Yao Yue, a principal software engineer, criticized the mandate, tweeting, "don't resign, let him fire you." She also posted, "don't be fired. Seriously" in a company Slack channel.
Yue was then fired five days later and told it was due to violating an unspecified company policy.
In a memo obtained by Business Insider, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told employees that beginning in April 2022, Uber staffers in 35 of the company's locations were required to return to the office at least half the time. He added that on other days, staffers were allowed to work remotely and that some could be entirely remote if they got clearance from their managers.
CEO Dara Khosrowshahi recently said remote work took away some of Uber's "most frequent customers," adding that "there is an audience who kind of stopped using us as frequently as they used to."
Along with slashing hundreds of jobs, Walmart also asked previously remote employees in the US to move to offices.
Staffers located in smaller offices in Dallas, Atlanta, and Toronto are additionally being directed to the company's central hubs, including its headquarters in Arkansas or New Jersey, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The retail giant will still permit hybrid schedules as long as workers come in-person most of the time, according to the outlet.
William Lewis, CEO and publisher of The Washington Post, told staffers in early November that they would be required to return to the office five days a week, according to a memo obtained by BI.
"I want that great office energy for us every day," Lewis wrote, referring to the energy in the office during election week. "I am reliably informed that is how it used to be here before Covid, and it's important we get this back."
All employees were expected to return to the office by June 2, 2025, while managers were expected to return by February 3, 2025.
After starting remote work in 2020, the Post previously required employees to return to the office three days a week in early 2022.
The announcement at the Post came shortly after Amazon's return-to-office mandate. The Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and executive chairman.
Zoom, the darling of remote work, said in 2022 that less than 2% of staffers work in person full time. However, last year, the video-calling companyΒ asked employeesΒ to return to the office.
Workers living within 50 miles of one of its offices were mandated to work there at least two days a week.
"We believe that a structured hybrid approach β meaning employees that live near an office need to be onsite two days a week to interact with their teams β is most effective for Zoom," a spokesperson previously said in a statement. "As a company, we are in a better position to use our own technologies, continue to innovate, and support our global customers."
Ying Tang/NurPhoto via Getty Images
The rise of AI, and the computing power it requires, is bringing all kinds of previously under-the-radar companies into the limelight. This week it's Broadcom.
Broadcom's stock has soared since late last week, catapulting the company into the $1 trillion market cap club. The boost came from a blockbuster earnings report in which custom AI chip revenue grew 220% compared to last year.
In addition to selling lots of parts and components for data centers, Broadcom designs and sells ASICs, or application-specific integrated circuits β an industry acronym meaning custom chips.
Designers of custom AI chips, chief among them Broadcom and Marvell, are headed into a growth phase, according to Morgan Stanley.
The biggest players in AI buy a lot of chips from Nvidia, the $3 trillion giant with an estimated 90% of market share of advanced AI chips.
Heavily relying on one supplier isn't a comfortable position for any company, though, and many large Nvidia customers are also developing their own chips. Most tech companies don't have large teams of silicon and hardware experts in house. Of the companies they might turn to design them a custom chip, Broadcom is the leader.
Though multi-purpose chips like Nvidia's and AMD's graphics processing units are likely to maintain the largest share of the AI chip market in the long-term, custom chips are growing fast.
Morgan Stanley analysts this week forecast the market for ASICs to nearly double to $22 billion next year.
Much of that growth is attributable to Amazon Web Services' Trainium AI chip, according to Morgan Stanley analysts. Then there are Google's in-house AI chips, known as TPUs, which Broadcom helps make.
In terms of actual value of chips in use, Amazon and Google dominate. But OpenAI, Apple, and TikTok parent company ByteDance are all reportedly developing chips with Broadcom, too.
Custom chips can offer more value, in terms of the performance you get for the cost, according to Morgan Stanley's research.
ASICs can also be designed to perfectly match unique internal workloads for tech companies, accord to the bank's analysts. The better these custom chips get, the more bargaining power they may provide when tech companies are negotiating with Nvidia over buying GPUs. But this will take time, the analysts wrote.
In addition to Broadcom, Silicon Valley neighbor Marvell is making gains in the ASICs market, along with Asia-based players Alchip Technologies and Mediatek, they added in a note to investors.
Analysts don't expect custom chips to ever fully replace Nvidia GPUs, but without them, cloud service providers like AWS, Microsoft, and Google would have much less bargaining power against Nvidia.
"Over the long term, if they execute well, cloud service providers may enjoy greater bargaining power in AI semi procurement with their own custom silicon," the Morgan Stanley analysts explained.
This may not be all bad news for Nvidia. A $22 billion ASICs market is smaller than Nvidia's revenue for just one quarter.
Nvidia's R&D budget is massive, and many analysts are confident in its ability to stay at the bleeding edge of AI computing.
And as Nvidia rolls out new, more advanced GPUs, its older offerings get cheaper and potentially more competitive with ASICs.
"We believe the cadence of ASICs needs to accelerate to stay competitive to GPUs," the Morgan Stanley analysts wrote.
Still, Broadcom and chip manufacturers on the supply chain rung beneath, such as TSMC, are likely to get a boost every time a giant cloud company orders up another custom AI chip.
Kantele Franko/AP
Amazon has committed to spending $10 billion on the expansion of its Ohio data center operations, in addition to the billions of dollars it has already said it plans to spend in the state, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said Monday.
The tech giant's new Ohio facilities, which should be completed by the end of 2030, will help power the push into AI by its cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services.
Just last year, AWS said it would invest $7.8 billion to expand its data center hub in Columbus and the surrounding suburbs. The company started building data centers in the region in 2015 and has at least six different campuses that are either operational or under construction.
Ohio has committed to spending more than $23 billion on data centers in the state between the money it has already spent and its committed investments, a spokesperson for Ohio's Department of Development said.
The investment in Ohio is part of Amazon's aggressive spending plan on data center construction to support AI demand. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said on the company's third-quarter earnings call in October that it plans to spendΒ $75 billionΒ on capital expenditures in 2024, most of which will go to cloud computing and data centers, and it expects to spend even more next year.
Local politicians have dubbed the Central Ohio "the Silicon Heartland." Gov. DeWine touted the AWS announcement this week as "strengthening the state's role as a major technology hub."
Most of Amazon's data centers are located in Northern Virginia, the largest data center market in the world. That area has become saturated with new facilities waiting to be connected to the electric grid. In the last 18 months, Amazon and its competitors have announced plans to build data centers in states nationwide. Just this year, Amazon announced plans to spend $11 billion on data centers in Indiana and $10 billion in Mississippi.
Ohio, which offers a generous slate of state and local tax incentives, including an up to 100% sales and use tax exemption for data center equipment, has seen a sharp uptick in development.
For this latest investment, the Ohio Tax Credit Authority approved additional job creation tax credits in AWS's existing economic development agreement with the state. In exchange for annual job creation tax credits, AWS has promised 1,058 "full-time equivalent" jobs with a minimum average annual payroll of $101.37 million, a spokesperson for Ohio's Department of Development told Business Insider.
Ohio law defines "full-time equivalent employees" as the result of a calculation, or "dividing the total number of hours for which employees were compensated for employment in the project by two thousand eighty." The employees must be directly employed by Amazon for the company to receive its tax credits, although there is no requirement for the kinds of jobs Amazon must offer.
When BI contacted AWS and asked what types of jobs would be available in its new Ohio data centers, an AWS spokesperson reiterated the information listed in Gov. DeWine's press release, which referred to the jobs as "new" and "well-paying."
AWS's financial commitment to the state will hinge on whether local utilities can provide the amount of electricity the company eventually says it will need.
AEP Ohio, the Columbus utility that serves Amazon, said earlier this year that it received 30 gigawatts of service requests from data centers alone β an amount that would put the region's demand for electricity close to New York City's.
Much of that demand comes from the wealthy suburban enclave of New Albany, Ohio, where Meta, Microsoft, Google, and QTS are all constructing major data center projects. The site of Intel's future semiconductor chip plant is in neighboring Johnstown, Ohio. The New Albany Company, the real estate company founded by billionaire retail mogul Les Wexner, orchestrated many of the area's major land sales to tech companies, including Intel.
For its newest data centers, AWS will look to sites beyond the Columbus region, though no locations have been finalized, according to a statement from Gov. DeWine's office. If AWS locates a data center outside the Columbus region, it would likely be outside AEP's service territory.
AEP has asked Ohio's public utilities regulator to approve a tariff and a special rate class for data centers that would require the power-hungry facilities to pay for the majority of electricity they anticipate needing β even if they ultimately do not consume all of it.
The data center industry, including Amazon, is working to quash AEP's proposal. In a NovemberΒ testimonyΒ filed with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, Michael Fradette, who leads Amazon's energy strategy, called the proposal a "discriminatory structure" that "unfairly targets data center customers by targeting customers in specific industries."
The matter has sowed division among corporate interests in Ohio. Those who oppose the tariffs include the Ohio Manufacturers' Association Energy Group, a lobbying offshoot of the state's major manufacturing industry trade group, and the Ohio Energy Leadership Council, which is represented by David ProaΓ±o, a lawyer in BakerHostetler's Columbus office who also represents Amazon's data center business before the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.
Meanwhile, Ohio Energy Group, which counts Cargill, Ford, GE, and Intel as members, has testified in favor of AEP's proposed data center tariffs. Walmart, a large customer of AEP in Ohio, has also come out supporting the tariff.
AEP is planning new transmission infrastructure projects to service data centers in the Columbus area, as well as the Intel chip plant. The future of the chip plant, which is supposed to bring 3,000 advanced manufacturing jobs to central Ohio, is uncertain as the company debates spinning off its struggling foundry business.
Rising energy demand from Columbus area data centers has triggered the need for new transmission infrastructure. Under AEP's existing rate structures, the costs of new transmission lines to data centers could be spread to other ratepayers.
Many of AEP's residential, commercial, and industrial customers saw transmission costs rise by $10 monthly in April, the fourth rate increase approved for the utility in three years. Next year, average bill totals will increase another $1.50 a month to support grid reliability, the utility said.
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App Store
The App Store favorites of 2024 include social media platforms and one popular AI assistant, but the most downloaded app of the year was Temu.
The Chinese-owned e-commerce app was downloaded more times this year than TikTok, Threads, or ChatGPT, according to Apple. It's become known for big discounts on various products, from tech gadgets to apparel.
Temu, owned by PDD Holdings, is particularly popular among Gen Z consumers in the US. Gen Zers between 18 and 24 downloaded it 42 million times during the first 10 months of 2024, according to the app analytics firm Appfigures, which pulled data from iOS and Android users.
The e-commerce giant launched in the US in 2022 and has had a meteoric rise since then. PDD Holdings' third-quarter sales grew 44% to $14.2 billion from the same period in 2023, according to exchange rates on September 30.
It has invested millions to market to American shoppers. Three Temu ads aired during the Super Bowl, where one 30-second clip during the highly-viewed game can cost $7 million.
With Donald Trump threatening high tariffs on Chinese goods, Temu's popularity could be at risk if it resorts to raising prices to offset a possible 60% levy on its products.
Apps from retailers Amazon, Shein, and McDonald's also made the Apple App Store's top 20 most-downloaded list this year β indicating that consumers were on the hunt for a deal across categories.
McDonald's has found success in using targeted in-app promotions to build loyalty among its customers.
The chain's head of US restaurants said earlier this year that loyalty customers visit 15% more often and spend nearly twice as much as non-loyalty customers, with loyalty platform sales expected to hit $45 billion by 2027.
Amazon, for its part, has sought to capitalize on Temu and Shein's low-price appeal with a new Haul section, which is also an app-only shopping experience.
As former Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan was fond of saying, "The best offers are in the app."
Amazon
Amazon is delaying the start of its strict new RTO policy for some employees because the company doesn't have enough office space in certain locations, Business Insider has learned.
The company's real estate team recently started notifying employees that they can continue following their current in-office guidance until workspaces are ready with delays stretching to as late as May, according internal Amazon notifications viewed by BI.
Impacted locations include Atlanta, Houston, Nashville, and New York, the notifications showed. An Amazon spokesperson said buildings will be ready for the majority of Amazon employees by January 2.
Earlier this year, Amazon ordered employees to start working from the office five days a week. beginning January 2. The company has said this will improve collaboration and bring other benefits. CEO Andy Jassy, in a memo announcing the mandate, said Amazon the decision to "further strengthen" its culture and teams.
Some staff were upset by the change and have argued that remote work provides more flexibility. The policy five-day-a-week policy is stricter than at some Amazon rivals and, by some accounts, stricter than Amazon's office-work policy before the pandemic.
This isn't the first time office capacity constraints have delayed Amazon's RTO plans. When the company last year ordered employees to start working in the office at least three days a week, many of its buildings weren't ready to accommodate all of those employees.
In internal guidelines viewed by BI, Amazon told employees when the new five-day RTO policy was first announced in September that they should plan to comply by January 2 whether or not they have assigned workspaces.
"For the vast majority of employees, assigned workspaces will be available by January 2, 2025," the guidance stated. "If your assigned workspace isn't ready by January 2, we still expect everyone to begin fully working from the office by that date."
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Jeff Bezos once said Amazon would become "Earth's Safest Place to Work," but Sen. Bernie Sanders says the e-commerce juggernaut isn't even the safest place to work in its own industry.
A sweeping new report from the Sanders-led Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) says that Amazon's focus on speed leads to "uniquely dangerous" warehouses.
In the report, which Amazon, in a response updated on December 16, disputes as "fundamentally flawed," Sanders said the company's workplace injury rates are worse than it lets on, with nearly twice as many recordable injuries per 100 workers occurring at Amazon than at non-Amazon warehouses in each of the past seven years.
All US employers, including Amazon, must report to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration any injuries that cause "death, days away from work, restricted work or transfer to another job, medical treatment beyond first aid, or loss of consciousness."
The report also said that Amazon, in public documents and reports to the committee, "repeatedly compared the injury rate for its warehouses of all sizes to the industry average for large warehouses," which have 1,000 or more employees. Only 40% of Amazon's warehouses have that number of workers, it said.
The comparison is likely more favorable as "the injury rate for the subcategory of large warehouses is consistently higher than the overall injury rate for the entire warehousing industry," according to the report.
"We benchmark ourselves against similar employers because it's the most effective way to know where we stand," Amazon said in response to the report. "Putting ourselves in a different category would be misleading."
It also estimated that about two-thirds of large warehouses are Amazon's, and it employed nearly 80% of all of the workers at facilities of that size.
In other words, although Amazon compares its rate against national averages compiled by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics for a subset of the warehouse industry, the report finds that Amazon is such a large employer it tilts the calculation of national statistics.
While Amazon has promoted its success in bringing its reportable injury rate down since 2019, the HELP committee's analysis showed that year had an unusually high rate of 9.01, while its long-term trend has remained relatively flat since 2017 between 6.54 and 7.74. The overall industry range in that period was 4.8 to 5.7, and the non-Amazon range was 3.17 to 4.18, according to the committee's analysis.
The report attributed much of the elevated injury rates to Amazon's "obsession with productivity and speed," which it said drives workers beyond safe limits.
"There is not a safe way to make rate without being injured," one worker identified as RN told the committee, referring to the target number of items processed per shift. "There is not a single person I worked with while I was at Amazon that didn't have an injury."
"Our safety progress is well documented, and we're proud of it," the company said.Β "We'll continue to invest in safety and continuous improvement for years to come as we work toward being the very best in the industries in which we operate."
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Just as Amazon warehouse workers are threatening to launch the "first large-scale" unfair labor practices strike at Amazon in US history, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) released a report accusing Amazon of operating "uniquely dangerous warehouses" that allegedly put profits over worker safety.
As chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Sanders started investigating Amazon in June 2023. His goal was "to uncover why Amazonβs injury rates far exceed those of its competitors and to understand what happens to Amazon workers when they are injured on the job."
According to Sanders, Amazon "sometimes ignored" the committee's requests and ultimately only supplied 285 documents requested. The e-commerce giant was mostly only willing to hand over "training materials given to on-site first aid staff," Sanders noted, rather than "information on how it tracks workers, the quotas it imposes on workers, and the disciplinary actions it takes when workers cannot meet those quotas, internal studies on the connection between speed and injury rates, and the companyβs treatment of injured workers."
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Big Tech companies and the moguls behind them are preparing to make six-figure donations to President-elect Donald Trump's inaugural committee.
Jeff Bezos' Amazon, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Mark Zuckerberg's Meta have all been reported to have made or will make $1 million to the outfit tasked with planning and organizing Trump's triumphant return to power.
"The financing of inaugurations is really a cesspool when it comes to campaign financing," Craig Holman, a lobbyist for government watchdog Public Citizen, told Business Insider.
Holman said there are few, if any, limits to inaugural donations, and what makes them particularly appealing is that megadonors and CEOs don't have to worry about picking the loser.
"Unlike financing a campaign, when you don't know for sure who is going to win, here in the inauguration, you've got the winner," he said. "So corporations and other special interests just throw money at them at the feet of the president with the hope of currying favor."
Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, a public interest group, said donations to the inaugural committee are less likely to irk the opposition.
"They are frequently a mechanism for entities that sit out elections to get good with the incoming administration," he said.
Trump's 2017 inaugural set a record, raking in roughly $107 million. Las Vegas Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson donated $5 million, the largest single donation. AT&T gave just over $2 million. For many in Washington, it was a time to make nice with an incoming president that few thought would win the 2016 race.
This time, Trump's inaugural offers one final major opportunity for CEOs to curry influence with the president-elect at his peak.
Since he'll be term-limited, the next major fundraising opportunity likely won't come until Trump begins preparations for a presidential library (should that even occur). At that point, companies will have missed their window to make a final impression before mergers and acquisitions.
Playing ball can have major benefits. OpenSecrets found in 2018 that "of the 63 federal contractors that donated to the inauguration, more than half won multimillion-dollar bids" from the federal government later on.
Foreign donors can't contribute to a president-elect's inaugural committee, and the committee must publicly disclose details about donations over $200 within 90 days of Inauguration Day. Otherwise, there are few limits on what individuals or corporations can give, and inaugural committees are not required to explain how they spend the money.
Some presidents, especially Obama in 2009, have imposed voluntary restrictions on donations. Obama refused to accept corporate donations or individual contributions over $50,000 for his historic first inauguration, though he later lifted those limits for his reelection celebration.
Hauser said donations will allow corporations to prepare for an especially transactional period.
"I think that corporations with an agenda in Trump's Washington, be it offense, like getting new contracts, or defense, like avoiding negative federal scrutiny, are going to spend millions of dollars in Washington to either make or protect billions in the real economy," Hauser said.
Amazon, Google, and Meta have all faced antitrust concerns. Republican lawmakers have frequently grilled Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over Facebook's decision to limit sharing the New York Post's initial report on Hunter Biden's laptop ahead of the 2020 election. Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated to help election officials during the COVID-19 pandemic, enraging some on the right, while Trump repeatedly lit into Amazon founder Jeff Bezos for The Washington Post's coverage of his first administration. Amazon sued the Trump administration after Microsoft was awarded a $10 billion cloud computing contract over them, alleging that Trump's animus for Bezos sunk their chances.
Bezos and Zuckerberg have since taken steps to repair their relationships with the Trump world. Zuckerberg has expressed regret over Facebook's decision to censor some posts about COVID-19. He also pledged not to donate to help election officials. Bezos intervened when The Post's editorial board was ready to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris.
Bezos also recently said Trump seemed "calmer than he was the first time and more settled."
"You've probably grown in the last eight years," Bezos said at The New York Times DealBook Summit in December. "He has, too."
Altman has been entangled in a legal battle with his OpenAI cofounder Elon Musk, who is set to be an influential figure in the Trump administration.
In a statement about his donation, Altman said, "President Trump will lead our country into the age of AI, and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead."
Representatives for Amazon, Meta, and Trump's inaugural did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
To get a taste of what may be in store, one only needs to look at what happened at President Joe Biden's inauguration.
A leaked fundraising memo showed that large donations netted individuals and organizations various perks, including opportunities to meet Biden, receive private briefings from top campaign officials, and "preferred viewing" for the virtual inauguration.
All of those benefits came amid pandemic precautions. Trump's party will have no such limits.
