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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

#341

Post by johnohara »

hgsgm wrote: post #335
johnohara wrote: post #327

Back in 2008, a woman I was dating worked for a subsidiary of PepsiCo and was laid off by Indra Nooyi's decision to create "financial breathing room" in response to the economic storm clouds that were gathering. The Financial Times described it as "just 1.7% of the group's global workforce." Meh. 1.7% Because of the economic collapse of 2008-2009, she didn't find another position for well over a year and a half, damn…

What's the point of this story? That your government is failing at social welfare so people are relying on PepsiCo for charity?

No. That real decisions affect real lives and have real effects. I do not subscribe to the idea that employees are an accounting problem either.

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

#342

Post by CydeWeys »

andirk wrote: post #323
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…

I don't understand why Netflix is part of FAANG. We should take it out of the acronym.

This is why: https://www.levels.fyi/companies/netflix/salaries/software-e...

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

#343

Post by ncphil »

bmitc wrote: post #308
GenerocUsername wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, et…

Definitely yes. Over 25 years ago I started a second career, in tech. After 6 months in a Microsoft academic program I got hired by a Big Six accounting firm to do desktop support. My previous education was completely nontechnical (a BA and MA in history, and a JD), as was my experience (10 years as a trial lawyer). No way was I the most qualified on paper for that job, but the people who hired me saw something and acted. A year later I was able to move into a new job with better pay at a Fortune 200 company, originally hired to do applications analysis but shortly after found myself a lead desktop engineer and later a Unix sysadmin. At every turn I was fortunate to have hiring managers that looked beyond my resume to see the potential there.

Sure, in 1997 an HR person told me they needed someone with at least 5 years experience in Windows NT, but in general most interviews I had in the late 90s and early 00s were way less myopic. I'm not sure I'd have the same experience if starting out today.

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

#344

Post by sangnoir »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #290
dkrich wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s unusual about this cycle though is that it’s the fear of a recession due to fed policy that is causing companies to cut back. In past cycles fed policy caused a recession nobody predicted and companies suddenly found their earnings in the toilet and made enormous cuts in head count, R&D spending, etc. Something about this cycle and these cuts feels I dunno, manufacturered or something. Like are 7k high paying…

The Fed is trying to trigger a recession, although they'll never come out and say it, because they want to increase the unemployment rate. Increased unemployment will put a stop to both price and wage inflation. At this point the Fed is trying to prevent a wage price spiral and a resetting of expectations among the public towards more inflation.

> The Fed is trying to trigger a recession, although they'll never come out and say it

Oh, they are not shy about it, it's just a little obfuscated by the jargon they use. One of the Fed's explicit goal is to lower "consumer demand", i.e. make people buy less stuff. Employment numbers are a function of demand, and the Fed has no means of directly tweaking employment numbers, but they can nudge demand (indirectly) by raising or lowering interest rates.

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

#345

Post by htag »

Spooky23 wrote: post #298
htag wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

15% in Q3 2022 is a larger dollar amount than 20% in Q3 2019...

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

#346

Post by midoridensha »

dboreham wrote: post #184
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…

I haven't worked there, but I got the impression going back decades that Amazon is a terrible place to work. That said, I have a friend who worked there and had really only positive things to say. And he quit the valley startup where we both worked when things became rocky there, and went back to a different job at Amazon. So YMMV it seems.

>I haven't worked there, but I got the impression going back decades that Amazon is a terrible place to work. That said, I have a friend who worked there and had really only positive things to say.

I've heard the same thing about them. I think it's a place where certain kinds of people like to work, for a while, because it pays well and looks great on a resume, and they don't mind working long hours to do that kind of work and earn that kind of pay. But it's not for everyone.

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

#347

Post by wdr1 »

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?

Um, yes?

Honestly, I'm not sure how one could sincerely make this statement.

Amazon's net income for Q3 '22 is roughly a third of its net income Q4 '21. If losing 2/3rds of your revenue isn't considered hitting the pocketbook, I don't want is.

Now you could yada yada yada they're still profitable, but that's a different argument.

Amazon was seeing 20-30% growth of its revenue. Their expenses were also growing at a similar base. Now that top line revenue isn't there, they need to address how to address bottom line growth.

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

#348

Post by CydeWeys »

shagie wrote: post #246
chihuahua wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alexa is a bit of a mystery. The plan apparently was: 1. Sell millions of devices at cost. Unrelenting sales on Echo devices 2. ??? 3. Profit And Step 2 was never filled in. Maybe it was "if people can re-order paper towels by shouting at Alexa, we'll sell more paper towels". But that plan has its limits.

??? was "monetize skills" to which they could take a cut of it. The problem was that it was rather difficult to do for a while and the "here's a great ecosystem of games and tools" never materialized for echo devices. Part of that is that people really don't know how to to do voice interfaces well. Another part is that it has to run on AWS which has all the AWS sizing and billing problems that need to be solved by pr…

> Part of that is that people really don't know how to to do voice interfaces well.

Maybe that'll change now with ChatGPT. The problem I have with voice interfaces is you need something at the level of AGI to make it compelling. I could have an hours-long engaging voice-only conversation with a real person, but what the hell am I going to do with a dumb "smart" speaker that will be even a fraction as engaging as, say, a videogame? 99% of my smart speaker use cases are: Setting timers/alarms, querying the weather, turning on/off the lights, playing songs/podcasts/videos. For anything more interesting/interactive than that, you need more intelligence than existing systems actually have.

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

#349

Post by kcplate »

lmm wrote: post #303
ryan93 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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 - w…

[flagged]

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

#350

Post by kcb »

sneak wrote: post #54
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…

Both parties treating the transaction as simply a business transaction is a good thing for society. Pretending that there is some value to "loyalty" in a vendor/customer relationship is silly, and only hurts you. Job hopping is a good thing for price discovery, and keeps wages for skilled workers going up as inflation eats away at them. Layoffs in downturns are an expected consequence of workers getting more expensiv…

> Both parties treating the transaction as simply a business transaction is a good thing for society.

Maybe. But not when Healthcare is on the line. That part still need to be fixed.

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