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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

#291

Post by imglorp »

htag wrote: post #262
dasil003 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to break this to you, but the decline of company-employee loyalty started 40 years ago, and even before that it only existed as a result of unprecedented post-war prosperity and lack of global competition. This doesn't mean that it's all downside for employees though. Amazon grew a huge business and paid their corporate employees top of market with huge upside over the last 20 years due to their phenomenal gro…

> they still have a P&L like any other company Amazon's quarterly reports have all been good so far (Q3 2022 is the latest). Sales are up 15% YoY, and they are profitable.

The coldest view would be the holiday buying surge is over and they can shed some excess to pad that margin until next fall.

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

#292

Post by seb1204 »

bee_rider wrote: post #201
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…

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

Thank you for this sentence that helps to correct my perspective. Not everyone is aiming high, some just want to go home and tend e.g. to their garden or walk the dog.

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

#293

Post by Def_Os »

maskil wrote: post #211

No company deserves loyalty, but 2+ months severance at a tech salary isn't a tragedy. I wouldn't mind getting laid off at some of the companies

With industry-wide layoffs, are you really that confident you can find a new job? The hiring process is already a crapshoot, and now you have much more competition.

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

#295

Post by CoastalCoder »

jdminhbg wrote: post #261
CoastalCoder wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Yes, I totally agree. The whisper quiet vans driving safely and unhurriedly up and down the street where my kids play are a much better solution. I hope that your plans to legislate the status quo into permanence are successful.

I may have a stale understanding of the laws regarding drones in the U.S. But my understanding is they can basically hover around / over your property without your consent.

That's very different from vans driving on public roads and (when I've ordered something) parking in my driveway.

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

#296

Post by 542458 »

shigawire wrote: post #159
peruvian wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's crazy to think but people do drink the kool-aid, despite history.

Some companies operate differently too. Obviously they still watch the bottom line, but some aren't as reactionary and are willing to take more pain to keep employees because they understand the value of that goodwill. More commonly private companies with a strong-willed founder/leader.

Agreed. I work for a privately held company and am a bit less jaded about it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the company is my friend or anything… but I know how much the owner hates layoffs on an emotional level and have seen the company do things like shifting everybody to 4.5 day weeks temporarily to avoid the need for layoffs. So I respect that.

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

#297

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #64

"Amazon had about $35 billion in cash and cash equivalents and long-term debt of about $59 billion at the end of the third quarter ended Sept. 30." https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/amazon-secu...

"Amazon's income dipped toward the end of 2022 as the economy took its toll. The tech giant spent billions doubling the size of its fulfillment network during the pandemic, a play that served it well initially but that proved to be short-sighted.

Amazon was forced to shut down or delay plans for over a dozen facilities as e-commerce sales last year grew slower than expected. Another headwind - soaring energy prices - impacted Amazon's business in a major way, with the company's spending on shipping climbing 10% to $19.9 billion in Q3 2022.

To cut costs, Amazon plans to reduce its workforce in early 2023, reportedly by as much as 10,000 employees."

https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/03/amazon-secures-8b-loan-ant...

"In October, Amazon disappointed Wall Street with a holiday season forecast that woefully missed analysts' expectations. The company's stock fell about 50% last year.

Like Jassy, a number of other tech founders and CEOs have since admitted they failed to accurately gauge pandemic demand."

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/04/business/amazon-layoffs/index...

May 15, 2021 - "The question, in view of these results, is what kind of world we are heading for after the pandemic. The company's vision points to a major consolidation of e-commerce as we adopt new habits brought about by the pandemic, to the point of becoming a trillion-dollar industry in the United States."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/enriquedans/2021/05/15/amazon-r...

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

#298

Post by Spooky23 »

htag wrote: post #262
dasil003 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to break this to you, but the decline of company-employee loyalty started 40 years ago, and even before that it only existed as a result of unprecedented post-war prosperity and lack of global competition. This doesn't mean that it's all downside for employees though. Amazon grew a huge business and paid their corporate employees top of market with huge upside over the last 20 years due to their phenomenal gro…

> they still have a P&L like any other company Amazon's quarterly reports have all been good so far (Q3 2022 is the latest). Sales are up 15% YoY, and they are profitable.

Wall St demands growth. Their revenue in 2019 was up 20%.

Some of their investments are boat anchors pulling the companies profits down.

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

#299

Post by mancerayder »

ericmay wrote: post #60
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…

Or maybe the MBA graduates are just fixing the sinking ship that engineering teams created with over-promising technology and demanding growth for their teams so that they could get bigger budgets: VR, meal delivery, AI, etc. ? I have an MBA man I wish I was one of these master of the universes deciding to hire and fire 17,000 people at a company. Do you need the Stanford MBA, Harvard, Wharton? Does Berkeley suffice…

I thought product teams were responsible for that. Engineers just do.

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

#300

Post by qqtt »

htag wrote: post #262
dasil003 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to break this to you, but the decline of company-employee loyalty started 40 years ago, and even before that it only existed as a result of unprecedented post-war prosperity and lack of global competition. This doesn't mean that it's all downside for employees though. Amazon grew a huge business and paid their corporate employees top of market with huge upside over the last 20 years due to their phenomenal gro…

> they still have a P&L like any other company Amazon's quarterly reports have all been good so far (Q3 2022 is the latest). Sales are up 15% YoY, and they are profitable.

Simple growth does not indicate that Amazon's quarterly reports are "all good" - Amazon like all other companies are valued based on their future earning potential. Amazon in particular has given very soft revenue and growth guidance compared to what they were earlier expecting, hence, they are one of the worst performing tech stocks right now. In absolute terms, both Amazon and Apple are first place for evaporating 800 billion dollars in market cap EACH over the last year.

Amazon in particular has a longstanding problem of ops costs rising quickly giving the constant potential to eat into profit margins. If a company does not have a path to profitability, at the scale to justify it's market cap, it will continue to lose investor money.

TL:DR; - reducing an earnings report to "sales grew, all good" is wildly misleading.

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