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

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

#31

Post by _heimdall »

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!

Market analysts often view cost cutting measures like layoffs as a favorable sign for near term growth. While it makes a lot of sense to view this as an indicator of trouble, it's more often spin as an indicator of a well led company that recognized the problem and is already on the way back up.

Synically, an argument can be made that those largely driving the markets are looking for any reason to make money. It doesn't actually matter much what the news is, just get ahead of the market movement then start turning dials and pushing sentiment.

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

#32

Post by TheCoelacanth »

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.

Plus the warehouse has insane voluntary turnover, so they can reduce pretty quickly just by slowing down hiring, while the corporate jobs are a bit cushier and need to actually be let go.

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

#33

Post by worik »

rvz wrote: post #25
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!

> It's crazy that AMZN announces this and the stock goes up in after hours trading. No it isn't. It is quite typical for a companies stock to spike up after a layoff announcement especially when the number was higher than initially reported. And as always totally expected.

Yes it is crazy.

The craziness encompasses the entire system

Systemic insanity

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

#34

Post by bdcravens »

greatpostman wrote: post #23

The funny thing is like 8 months ago amazon was hiring engineers with 4 years of experience for 350-400k. These people aren’t even good programmers. And now they need to cut.

Since you are saying the programmers they hired aren't good, it sounds like you have personal knowledge of the situation (or a bone to pick)

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

#35

Post by m00x »

nfRfqX5n wrote: post #26
greatpostman wrote: post #23

The funny thing is like 8 months ago amazon was hiring engineers with 4 years of experience for 350-400k. These people aren’t even good programmers. And now they need to cut.

If they can make L5/6 to get that salary then they're probably pretty good actually

You can make it to L5/6 without being a good engineer. I interviewed several Uber/Amazon engineers and they couldn't solve a simple problem (very easy problem that most bootcamp grads could do).

A lot of them get there by being interviewed by other bad engineers, and just float when the market is strong, or use politics to get in a good position.

A guy at my company just merges library upgrade PRs blindly. That's all he does. He fought getting dependabot up on Github, but he finally conceded. He hasn't done a commit since. I've reported it to management, but I was told it wasn't our team's responsibility.

There are tons of dark corners to hide in at big companies.

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

#36

Post by VincentEvans »

Here’s a thought that has been percolating in my mind for a bit since these “market adjustments” began a month or two back.

Somehow at some point, in what perhaps could be blamed on the ever-hated mass produced MBAs - companies got really comfortable with the “it’s not personal, it’s just good business” of letting go of their employees for a slightest reason, or sometimes for no reason at all - just to make it look to their investors like they got their shit together.

We are seeing a bit of a market downturn - but it hasn’t hit Amazon pocketbook now, has it? Are they in danger of running out of money? What happened to “people are our most important resource”?

And this brings me to my main point - I think years of this has had an unexpected side-effect the companies never signed up for: people started treating companies they way companies treating people and we are starting to see the results - quiet quitting, oft bemoaned lack of loyalty, job hopping, etc. Now I am not saying it’s all new, but at least in my observation it’s peaking now and my thesis is these things are connected.

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

#37

Post by ZephyrBlu »

nfRfqX5n wrote: post #26
greatpostman wrote: post #23

The funny thing is like 8 months ago amazon was hiring engineers with 4 years of experience for 350-400k. These people aren’t even good programmers. And now they need to cut.

If they can make L5/6 to get that salary then they're probably pretty good actually

4 YOE is probably SDE2 or SDE3, which is mid (L5) or senior (L6) in Amazon levels.

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

#38

Post by bdcravens »

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!

How else would you value a stock? It's fractional ownership in a company; bottom line matters. Also, many people who aren't "rich" own stocks.

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

#39

Post by jjallen »

jasonpeacock wrote: post #30
discodave wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Prime Air was not shut down: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/team/prime-air

There are zero openings. How does this prove it’s not shutdown?

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

#40

Post by m00x »

jasonpeacock wrote: post #30
discodave wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Prime Air was not shut down: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/team/prime-air

> There are currently no open jobs in Prime Air.
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