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Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

wsj.com

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Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#11

Post by jjcon »

wdb wrote: post #5

Are there enough companies that can afford all the tens of thousands of fired workers SV salaries if all these big companies are firing them?

Most of the tech companies are letting a mix of recent hires, corporate middle management and in amazon’s case some logistics warehouse workers and specialty project engineers were let go. It’s a pretty eclectic, diverse group of people so its not as hard as it sounds to reabsorb into other companies. If they were all engineers or all HR there might be issues but in an already over-employed economy already 17k jobs won’t even make a dent in just about any sector right now.

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#12

Post by Retric »

johncessna wrote: post #10

I'm not following the article. It makes a point of distinguishing between 'corporate workers' and warehouse/delivery/logistics/etc folks. Then it claims the reason for this rif is because they expanded to meet the demands of the pandemic, most of which would be in the warehouse sector, and now that that demand is gone, they need to reduce the workforce. If so, why are they reducing the corporate workers?

Every thousand warehouse/delivery workers you add requires several office workers for HR etc.

So, the separation isn’t completely clean.

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#13

Post by raziel2701 »

It's crazy that AMZN announces this and the stock goes up in after hours trading. People are losing their livelihoods yet rich people only care about the potential higher profits.

This is very disconnected from reality, amzn needs consumers to buy their products. If layoffs keep piling up higher and deeper something is going to break and hello recession!

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#14

Post by __derek__ »

johncessna wrote: post #10

I'm not following the article. It makes a point of distinguishing between 'corporate workers' and warehouse/delivery/logistics/etc folks. Then it claims the reason for this rif is because they expanded to meet the demands of the pandemic, most of which would be in the warehouse sector, and now that that demand is gone, they need to reduce the workforce. If so, why are they reducing the corporate workers?

The last paragraph makes the connection:

> When demand started to wane with customers moving back to shopping in stores, Amazon initiated a broad cost-cutting review to pare back on units that were unprofitable

Waning demand triggered cost-cutting, which focused on unprofitable orgs.

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#15

Post by asah »

raziel2701 wrote: post #13

It's crazy that AMZN announces this and the stock goes up in after hours trading. People are losing their livelihoods yet rich people only care about the potential higher profits. This is very disconnected from reality, amzn needs consumers to buy their products. If layoffs keep piling up higher and deeper something is going to break and hello recession!

AMZN stock is held by millions of people, not just "rich"

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#16

Post by discodave »

jvanderbot wrote: post #6

I just wanted to point out that probably 2000 of us (in robotics/AI) were "laid off" in Q4, but were paid through the end of the calendar year "To find an internal position". Almost none did, and I don't think that was really the intent, but what do I know. They're in this batch. I expect a Q2 announcement of all those people who in Q1 were "transitioning to new positions" that were eliminated before they could move.

Sounds like Amazon.

Back in the day they managed to avoid 'layoffs' by transferring thousands of people from Fire Phone -> Alexa. They somehow avoided layoffs from shutting down Prime Air (drones, not 767s), even though that had a lot of employees.

They're pretty good at getting people to leave without doing 'layoffs'.

Heck, if you believe that they've always had 5-10% 'unregretted attrition' targets, which I do, and apply it to the whole company, that's 50-100k employees per year!

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#17

Post by johncessna »

Retric wrote: post #12
johncessna wrote: post #10

I'm not following the article. It makes a point of distinguishing between 'corporate workers' and warehouse/delivery/logistics/etc folks. Then it claims the reason for this rif is because they expanded to meet the demands of the pandemic, most of which would be in the warehouse sector, and now that that demand is gone, they need to reduce the workforce. If so, why are they reducing the corporate workers?

Every thousand warehouse/delivery workers you add requires several office workers for HR etc. So, the separation isn’t completely clean.

Yeah, fair. They mention recruiters specifically by name. Some of that could also fall into the retail operations bucket as well.

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#18

Post by adoxyz »

raziel2701 wrote: post #13

It's crazy that AMZN announces this and the stock goes up in after hours trading. People are losing their livelihoods yet rich people only care about the potential higher profits. This is very disconnected from reality, amzn needs consumers to buy their products. If layoffs keep piling up higher and deeper something is going to break and hello recession!

Laying people off reduces one of the biggest costs to an organization, thus making it more profitable (even if in the short term), thus the stock price rises. Stocks are always forward looking and investors believe that by cutting down costs and re-focusing will make amazon worth more in the future.

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#20

Post by [deleted] »

asah wrote: post #15
raziel2701 wrote: post #13

It's crazy that AMZN announces this and the stock goes up in after hours trading. People are losing their livelihoods yet rich people only care about the potential higher profits. This is very disconnected from reality, amzn needs consumers to buy their products. If layoffs keep piling up higher and deeper something is going to break and hello recession!

AMZN stock is held by millions of people, not just "rich"

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