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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

#171

Post by cmrdporcupine »

monero-xmr wrote: post #4

How is Google avoiding any layoffs? I know their structure is such that stockholders supposedly can’t force any changes, but it’s hard to justify being the only company without any cuts. Their stock is falling and they still have a single cash cow for over 80% of their revenue despite over a decade of attempts to diversify.

Pretty sure we'll see it happen this year. But they may be hoping just to avoid it through attrition, by slowing hiring drastically and turning up the heat in performance reviews and goal setting.

I am not there anymore, but I hear perf process has been drastically reformed there. I always hated it, but one thing it did offer was a thorough paper trail and process and gave low performers many opportunities to improve their game. I understand now a lot of the red tape has been cut and the process is more intimate with the manager and their report. This would have been good for me and people I knew, at times, but I can also see it being a good way to just sort of quietly push people out.

My observation was that in many areas, productivity was super crappy during at least the initial stages of COVID. I think many companies suffered from this. There will be long-term fallout from that.

Anyways that single cash cow continues to be a money printing machine. When ad revenues drop significantly many quarters in a row, then you'll know there's trouble brewing.

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

#172

Post by ojbyrne »

anonreeeeplor wrote: post #153
VincentEvans wrote: post #36

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 t…

I believe that there is a power swing about to happen where talented individuals may get a lot more powerful and influential in relation to institutions and corporations. I liken it to how MANPADS allow individual soldiers to overpower tanks for far cheaper, flipping the script on 100 years of war. It hasn’t fully come to pass yet but corporations hire way too many “credential dead weight.” In my career I have often…

The “ADS” part of MANPADS stands for “air defense system,” so kind of a malformed analogy.

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

#174

Post by _gabe_ »

m00x wrote: post #35
nfRfqX5n wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I interviewed several Uber/Amazon engineers and they couldn't solve a simple problem (very easy problem that most bootcamp grads could do).

That's probably why you're interviewing them. I doubt the ones who are good at their job are leaving as much as the ones who aren't. This is like reverse survivorship bias.

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

#175

Post by gnicholas »

> He added that the majority of the cuts are on the retail and recruiting areas of Amazon.

How large would their recruiting organization be, and what percent do companies cut when they foresee that they won't need to proactively recruit for a couple years (because there will be enough job seekers who will apply to listed positions). I assume they'll still need people to process candidates, but that won't be as many as when they were reaching out to people and trying to woo them.

What does retail mean? Is this a reference to Alexa? Or is this about their storefront operations?

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

#176

Post by Waterluvian »

VincentEvans wrote: post #36

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 t…

Most workers at large companies are seen as fungible cogs. Even the engineers. What you describe feels, unfortunately, like an antiquated idea from the 1900s.

I think we need more unions, more automation, and more social security. We are racing towards a future where there simply won’t be enough “jobs” for everyone and the companies sure as heck aren’t going to look out. Companies have no soul and the humans that run them have worked hard to insulate themselves from that being responsible for the actions of that lack of soul they instilled.

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

#177

Post by djmips »

germanjoey wrote: post #92
debatem1 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're going to. The new performance process is clearly teeing people up to get the axe. They'll just say it's part of their new process rather than a layoff.

What's the new performance process?

From what I've heard - It's been changed to a yearly (instead of twice a year) and apparently there's been pressure to rate people at a higher standard with a simple 5 level impact score. 'Not enough impact'. 'Moderate impact'. 'Significant impact'. 'Outstanding impact'. 'Transformative impact'. This feels kind of like something akin to a bell curve with the peak in Significant. I assume the culling will be from the 'Not enough' and possibly 'Moderate' bins. For a complete picture we would also need to understand the old performance process. A Googler could fill us in as this change has happened only this year.

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

#178

Post by rideontime »

ip_addr wrote: post #138
greatpostman wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have personal knowledge

On the internet everyone is worse than me because i am the best. {Insert south park wow guy meme here}.

What does "south park wow guy meme" mean?

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

#179

Post by PheonixPharts »

VincentEvans wrote: post #36

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 t…

> Are they in danger of running out of money?

Have we been in a bubble so long that people have forgotten that the raison d'etre for publicly traded companies existing is not to simply exist, but rather make profit and ideally continually expanding profit for share holders?

For a startup runway and growth of whatever nature are all that matter. You need to exist long enough for the exit event, and grow in a way that makes this more possible. If you have a two year runway, you have two more years to win your investors back their money and more. But this is not true for publicly traded companies. Simply surviving or, even worse, slowly burning reserves is not enough.

I know so many post-IPO startup employees that dismiss layoffs because "the company has tons of cash!"

Do you invest in a company because you think it won't go out of business for a decade? No you invest because their profit margins are healthy and you think they'll continue to grow in a sustainable, net revenue positive way.

I still remember the dotcom bubble, which was much shorter than what we've been in, and the public debate among investors was about the "new economy" and claims that "things are different now". However those old fuddy-duddies that kept arguing that companies need to make more than they spend were proven right in just a few years.

Today I see CEOs and executive leadership at companies genuinely surprised that they're being asked to prove that they can be profitable. I see generations of tech workers sincerely confused about the very idea of what it means to run a successful business.

Amazon is doing massive layoffs because they need to show investors that the know how to create value, and become more profitable. At least Amazon has shown periodically that they can make profit. There are plenty of post-IPO startups that have never proven that they are even capable of not running at a loss.

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

#180

Post by CoastalCoder »

kneebonian wrote: post #119
spamizbad wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea behind quiet quitting is based around the idea of shooting for a 3 on a scale of 1-to-5 instead of shooting for a 4 or 5: AFTER management has dropped the ball and failed to acknowledge their efforts. People have twisted this to mean "I am going to do the bare minimum without getting fired" -- these people very quickly end up on PIPs or equivalent at many other companies, not just stricter employers like Ama…

"I have six bosses bob, my only real motivation is not to get hassled that and fear of losing my job. But here's the thing bob, that gets someone to work just hard enough to avoid getting fired." - Office Space

8, not 6 :) [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwlZQJyKZ2A

(I am pedantic, but also I just watched Office Space two days ago.)

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