91–100 of 152 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is "a few hundred" is an undefined number. 400 would be about 1%, which would be fairly reported as a few hundred. My ceiling number is very high, but I would believe more than 1% are let go.
Does amazon really employ 40,000 people in its corporate headquarters? Microsoft does, but it has a much much bigger campus.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is like saying Apple (iPhones) are a threat to Google (Android) when it was Apple that first brought touch-based smartphones to market. Palm and Microsoft (through OEMs) both released touch-based smartphones years before the iPhone. They were very popular in the military, government, and legal markets, though a distant #2 and #3 to Blackberry (which did not release a touch-capable device until after the iPhone).
Do you have links to back up your claim? Palm's first touch screen smartphone effort was released in 2009 [0]. Not that it matters considering the original discussion was Google vs Apple. Anyway, PDAs were a different device category from smartphones and many of them required a stylus for input like the HP iPAQ which ran Windows Pocket PC. IIRC, the iPhone keynote talked about how they did away with the stylus becaus…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's funny if they've had a hiring freeze since last week I got contacted by an Amazon recruiter wanting me to move to Seattle
Got one today too. Put on a Gore tex coat and stood under the shower, on cold, for a half an hour, and decided that Seattle is probably not to my liking outside of, say, late July.
Plus, no snow unless you want it- then you drive to the mountains.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is "a few hundred" is an undefined number. 400 would be about 1%, which would be fairly reported as a few hundred. My ceiling number is very high, but I would believe more than 1% are let go.
Does amazon really employ 40,000 people in its corporate headquarters? Microsoft does, but it has a much much bigger campus.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Got one today too. Put on a Gore tex coat and stood under the shower, on cold, for a half an hour, and decided that Seattle is probably not to my liking outside of, say, late July.
Eight months of the year it's drizzle every day. But the other four months, well they almost make up for it. I spent a couple of really great summers in Seattle. Plus, no snow unless you want it- then you drive to the mountains.
At first I assumed this was a stack ranking type "cutting the dead weight loose" move but doesn't appear to be so. The article cites "too much staff for the work" but that seems strange; Amazon has never been bereft of ambition ("Think Big"). What would be the real strategic impetus for slashing hundreds of positions? How does this jibe with leadership principles like "Hire and Develop the Best" and "Insist on the Hi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is "a few hundred" is an undefined number. 400 would be about 1%, which would be fairly reported as a few hundred. My ceiling number is very high, but I would believe more than 1% are let go.
Does amazon really employ 40,000 people in its corporate headquarters? Microsoft does, but it has a much much bigger campus.
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/p/feature/4kc8ovgnyf996yn
[1]: https://static.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/7...
The hiring freeze has already been horrendous. We're told to keep hitting all our goals even if we lose people and can't hire to backfill. Now we're just straight up losing people to layoffs? Keeping the lights on alone is barely possible with the resources we have. It would be one thing if we were in dire straights as a company. Imho, this is just short-sighted nonsense so some senior leader can hit an arbitrary goa…
Oh, so as long as the company is profitable, it should just throw money at employees that are no longer adding net value?
>Imho, this is just short-sighted nonsense so some senior leader can hit an arbitrary goal and get a bonus.
Based on what? Reading an article with no internal insight and absolutely no knowledge of the business itself? Sounds more like you have an ax to grind.
>I wonder if Alexa or AWS are hiring.
I mean, you didn't even read the article.
The hiring freeze has already been horrendous. We're told to keep hitting all our goals even if we lose people and can't hire to backfill. Now we're just straight up losing people to layoffs? Keeping the lights on alone is barely possible with the resources we have. It would be one thing if we were in dire straights as a company. Imho, this is just short-sighted nonsense so some senior leader can hit an arbitrary goa…
>short-sighted nonsense so some senior leader can hit an arbitrary goal and get a bonus This is in fact how most business decisions are made.
I've always wondered how companies like Amazon and Apple with piles of cash justify not giving raises or passing laying off people. I understand that you want to be smart with your money but if I'm on the business end of this decision it probably hurts more than getting laid off from a company that's struggling and has no other options.
As you probably know, Amazon profits have been marginal or non-existent. They use the net profit from some businesses to pay for expansion in others. To do that, they have to actually produce net profits in some of their businesses, i.e. keep costs under control. Bezos is using the older retail business to finance his newer, shinier adventures in digital devices. And the layoffs are exactly in the retail business, the cash cow business, to free up more money for shinier things.
