Amazon’s heavily automated warehouse in Tracy, California, employs over 3,000 people, roughly triple the 1,000 it had at its 2023 opening, even though robots now do much of the walking, sorting, and cart pushing workers once did, according to Eugene Kim at Business Insider. Many of those workers have moved into jobs supervising the machines, like process assistants who watch the robot fleets and dispatch staff to clear jams, or floor monitors who reset Proteus robots when they stall. Senior manager Mohammed Khan estimated a single Robin arm does the labor of two to seven people at the step it took over, but packing orders and loading trailers are still done by hand. Amazon officials said Tracy has about the same headcount as a nearby site with fewer robots but processes more volume.
