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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

#201

Post by bee_rider »

spamizbad wrote: post #90
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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”? Companies plan for where the market is going, not last quarter’s results. It’s fully clear to everyone that the economy has shifted dramatically. They are adjusting as appropriate. Also, these people will be laid off with s…

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…

“Quiet Quitting” is a wildly over-dramatic name for just doing your job at a “meets-expectations” level.

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

#203

Post by WalterBright »

chihuahua wrote: post #141
WalterBright wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I long ago concluded that the way to make pots o' money is to: 1. go out for a walk. Offer the first good looking man a CEO-ship of your new company. 2. pay him $$$$$ 3. hire loads of people 4. fire them all 5. goto 3

In this scheme, where do the pots 'o money come from?

Steps 2 and 4 are what the internet tells me are the moneymakers.

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

#204

Post by Olreich »

anonreeeeplor wrote: post #148

I have interviewed with Amazon several times. Every time I don’t make it through because I realized the people in many of the roles were (a) not the best people (b) I seemed to know way more than many of them about their domain (c) they kept trying to offer me horizontal transfer (d) they wanted to pay me less than I know I am worth. My impression is Amazon is a factory tuned to hire and churn a sort of middle of the…

There are brilliant devs at Amazon. There are poor devs at Amazon. The quality of the dev has very little bearing on promotion and hiring from what I can tell. Story telling and document writing appear to be the only things that are graded on a scale, everything else is pass/fail.

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

#205

Post by mahidol »

This is worrisome - joined Amazon ~4 months ago because it seemed like the most sensible thing to do considering my immigration status. Have one last attempt left at the H-1B lottery; PERM is underway but no hopes of getting it finished before STEM OPT runs out. Was thinking of getting married to my girlfriend soon, but not too sure about that anymore (she's in the 3rd year of her PhD so she cannot really move with me) if I'm going to get axed considering the job market isn't the best either. Not hyped about the prospect of moving to my home country since I have not lived there since I was 9. F*k, life just hasn't been kind these last couple years.

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

#206

Post by bee_rider »

SpeedilyDamage wrote: post #113
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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”? Companies plan for where the market is going, not last quarter’s results. It’s fully clear to everyone that the economy has shifted dramatically. They are adjusting as appropriate. Also, these people will be laid off with s…

Isn't getting PIP'd and then fired not, "bare minimum to not get fired" though? Sounds like those folks are doing much less than required not to be fired. My understanding of "quiet quitting" was a) it's a stupid term made up to give people a sense that they're in control of something they're not - needing to work to survive and; b) you were explicitly not trying to climb any ladder and merely doing your job as it wa…

I’m pretty sure I first saw “quiet quitting” coming from, like, the productivity fetishist LinkedIn set, or something along those lines (although I could be wrong, this was not allocated a high-priority sector of memory). Which is to say, I think it is a term originally intended to shame employees who are simply fulfilling their responsibilities. I guess it has been reclaimed or something, though?

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

#207

Post by ascotan »

asdff wrote: post #65
adoxyz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How can a company be more profitable with less workers if the workers are the source of the profits?

Apparently they're not the source of profit:

```Amazon initiated a broad cost-cutting review to pare back on units that were unprofitable```

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

#208

Post by dkrich »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #162
dkrich wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a great deal of this situation is narrative based. People are generally terrible at predicting earnings six months out as well as recessions and if we get a major recession it would easily be the most widely anticipated recession in history. First it starts with higher than expected CPI followed by hawkish fed policy. People learned their lesson last cycle and became worried that rate hikes as in past cycles…

When the fed commits to hiking rates to slow the economy, it almost always leads to recession. You'd have to be a hyper optimist to not plan for a recession, as an individual, or a business. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/29/federal-reserve-rec...

They have very little credibility currently because of past miscues beginning in 2018. The fed has to talk tough because if they were to say “we probably aren’t going to hike much more” markets would likely rebound, easing liquidity and making their job of reducing inflation harder if not impossible.

The problem is that it seems the bond market sees through this and isn’t buying the tough talk. I think most people believe the fed and buy into the popular narrative that taking rates from zero to 4.5% will decimate the economy (even though 4% is actually very normal historically and anything under 4 was considered quite low).

Watch what happens with fed policy if CPI comes in well beneath expectations next Thursday.

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

#209

Post by ge96 »

rideontime wrote: post #178
ip_addr wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Think it's the overweight balding guy playing a video game.

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

#210

Post by midoridensha »

ptero wrote: post #73
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…

Being able to easily lay off employees means that the companies are much happier hiring, too. Most of those fired will likely land another job soon, precisely because their new employer does not have to treat their hiring as a multi-year commitment. Europe, which makes it very hard to let an employee go, tends to have significantly higher unemployment than the US, which is much more cavalier about layoffs. My 2c.

Japan makes it very hard to lay off employees too, but unemployment is very low.
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