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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

#301

Post by AgentOrange1234 »

ojbyrne wrote: post #172
anonreeeeplor wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Air defense is to MANPADS as cloud is to Individual developer?

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

#302

Post by benjaminwootton »

r00fus wrote: post #170
thfuran wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I was in the minority, pretty much the only person cynical about big companies' claims how "people are our most important resource" You tread in strange circles. I'd think a cursory look at history ought to be enough to put the lie to such claims.

I think it has more to do with the fact that @i_have_an_idea's blinders fell off. Also, at the same time, due to COVID and consequently mandatory WFM, many other people had the same epiphany, leading to so-called quiet-quitting. Honestly I also feel there's another factor of a lot of depression as people look around and see that cynical view was the truth all along.

I see this too. The Covid restrictions led to people seeing through a lot of the false or thinly veiled assumptions that we live under. After that you are left with a more cynical and apathetic view of the world.

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

#303

Post by lmm »

ryan93 wrote: post #286
lmm wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's "prosperity"? I feel much better off with a decent work-life balance and the assurance that I won't arbitrarily lose my job than I would with a larger number in my bank account but none of that protection.

[flagged]

> you can literally start a company with the coworkers you would have unionized with and created security for yourself and them.

I can, but we'd still be taking on a bunch of risk - we'd have to put the capital into the company, as owners we would no longer be eligible for unemployment insurance if the company did fold, we have the possibility of one of us kicking another out so internal politics suddenly matters - when the whole point of the exercise was to get stability even at the cost of some upside.

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

#304

Post by lhorie »

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…

No offense but this comment reeks of bias.

For one thing, if by your own analysis, these companies' interviewing processes aren't effective, there's logically a conclusion that yours also aren't, given that interview processes are fairly similar among big tech companies. I've even also heard of an interviewer trying to tell a director with a straight face that a high level IC candidate (L6/L7 IIRC) from a prestigious big tech couldn't solve a "simple" problem at one of those companies. Leetcode style questions aren't even necessarily good proxies for whether an engineer is actually effective at their job or not (and yes, a good number of FAANGers openly admit here and elsewhere that they needed to grind leetcode to pass interviews at these companies).

Another thing is that Uber and Amazon are fairly competitive w/ other more prestigious FAANGs in terms of compensation. A decent staff eng at Uber isn't going to be very interested in grinding leetcode for a equivalent role at Google, the compensation delta is just not appealing[0]

[0] https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Uber,Google&track=Software%2...

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

#305

Post by kubectl_h »

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…

There is an interesting exchange in Bourdains "Parts Unknown" [1] that he did in Montana where he's talking to a former labor leader and politician from Butte where he says "the company is a son of a bitch, but they were our son of a bitch" (very much worth watching the entire show, but in particular the Butte segment). I grew up in a union family and that held true of the union as well. Something changed in my lifetime (I'm 40 years old) and I really do think it was NAFTA and free trade in general, but also it was the US reaching a terminal state of resource extraction, or at least the level of resource extraction we were willing to tolerate. The two of these weakened unions and worker solidarity and slowed the profit momentum that we had become accustom to and gave carte blanche to corporations to seek local profits in remote places. I think this fundamentally changed the dynamic of being a worker across all industries and, as you allude to, the focus on organizational optimization (coupled with quarterly earnings focused business culture) only heightened the alienation of workers and now the chicken is coming home to roost for the entire American project. Aside from deindustrialization and optimization, I think much of this can be laid at the foot of the stock market and our collective fixation on it as a barometer for societal success.

[1] https://youtu.be/KU7mda-4KwQ?t=1232

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

#306

Post by andsoitis »

zmgsabst wrote: post #104
andsoitis wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re saying that the Amazon CFO is sponsoring terrorists?

Yes — specifically the ones who gunned down Antonio Mays Jr near Amazon HQ.

That’s a pretty serious allegation.

What is the estimated dollar amount that he had sponsored? Or is he sponsoring by buying weapons for them?

Or something else?

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

#307

Post by JackFr »

mint2 wrote: post #273
PheonixPharts wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> “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” Should be noted the ideology that the purpose of a corporation is to maximize the profits for shareholder above all else is a modern obsession, and always takes a short term view. Starving a company just for a few good years of share prices is is dumb b…

The goal is to maximize shareholder value, which is not the same as maximizing short term profits.

Amazon famously did not turn a profit for years as its stock price rose. It was able to do so because the market largely trusted the management.

The reason why the stock market demands profit from most companies is that many, many managers and directors are bad at their job. Demanding profits is a way to keep management disciplined and focused, and avoiding years long boondoggles and fiascos. This is important since they are playing with other peoples money.

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

#308

Post by bmitc »

GenerocUsername wrote: post #271
andsoitis wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People are tired of job hopping to get market pay If nobody moved from job to job, there would be no market .

There would be a lot fewer recruiters, and more experienced engineers. Also a less monolithic tech culture. Right now every employee is more or less compatible across every company because we all seek to be transferable

An interesting thing that I have experienced is that a lot of recruiters and companies don’t care about your experience. All they care about is the exact experience they are looking for. In a world where most people stay in a position for a while, it’s only natural to gain a lot of experience and responsibility but not necessarily broad experience. So in that case, it would be very hard to switch jobs, industries, etc.

So what I am curious about is, did companies used to hire in less myopic ways?

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

#309

Post by zxcvbn4038 »

GenerocUsername wrote: post #271
andsoitis wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People are tired of job hopping to get market pay If nobody moved from job to job, there would be no market .

There would be a lot fewer recruiters, and more experienced engineers. Also a less monolithic tech culture. Right now every employee is more or less compatible across every company because we all seek to be transferable

You would think so but too many people get really comfortable and never expand their skills beyond the minimum required to do their current job. Last year I had an SRE position open I had to interview over three dozen people before I found one guy who could explain anything he had done in any detail. Everybody else was probably in the room when someone else did something, but could not give details of what was done, why it was done a particular way, or what they might do the same or differently if they did it again.

Some of the people I had to be honest with - if they are paying you the kind of money you say to reset passwords and stare at the wall, you should stay where you are and make sure that wall never leaves your sight.

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

#310

Post by jasonlotito »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #58
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…

> 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…

> (Source: Had some “quiet quit” team members over my career, suffered greatly during those times)

Quiet quitting are people doing their job. If you suffered, it's because you were expecting slave labor.

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