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Comment by tanilama | Hacker News Reader

> Why the hell are U.S. cities spending tens of billions of dollars to steal jobs from one another in the first place?

First, US, at this point doesn't have a shortage of jobs, it has a shortage of good jobs. In case of Amazon, it creates good jobs, then it is a demand and supply problem.

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I've interviewed about 100 programmers who just passed their 366th day at Amazon and are looking to get the hell out. Further down the ladder their people are pissing in bottles and collecting food stamps. The only person at Amazon with "a good job" is Bezos himself.

For most employers satisfied, happy, and content workers are just underexploited. If they aren't miserable you aren't getting your monies worth.

Its a legitimate mindset way too much of the business world in the US believes despite the psychological evidence that content and happy employees are more productive.

The consequence of such a widely held backwards rewards structure is that in almost any job there is someone else doing something even worse that is more than willing to take your spot to reduce their misery by a fraction.

I feel like there is some selection bias there - you certainly aren't going to be interviewing very many people who are happy with their current job at Amazon.

It is pretty out of touch statement, if you read it carefully. There are probably 1000 people waiting in line to fill those 100 people's jobs. The good jobs you described, decent pay without labor or stress, I do believe they exist, but it is not common, and surely won't become the norm.

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