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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

#371

Post by roncesvalles »

snake_doc wrote: post #244
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...

Yesterday Jan 3, Amazon borrowed another $8B at 0.75% plus SOFR (which is basically Fed Funds rate at ~4.3%) through a short term credit facility. Also, Amazon has ~$69B in long term lease liabilities. That’s about ~3x the combined long term lease liabilities of Walmart and Costco (~$20B combined). Walmart and Costco are the world’s #1 and #3 retailer, Amazon being #2. From the beginning when Jassy took the job, the…

>Also, Amazon has ~$69B in long term lease liabilities. That’s about ~3x the combined long term lease liabilities of Walmart and Costco (~$20B combined). Walmart and Costco are the world’s #1 and #3 retailer, Amazon being #2.

Long term lease liabilities are next to meaningless for any kind of analysis because it's the sum of rent due at any point after the next 12 months. Could be at the 13th month. Could be at the 13th year. I am not an accountant but I believe you could sign a 50 year lease at $1m/year, that can be terminated at any time by paying a $1m penalty, and it would still show up as a $49m long term "liability".

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

#372

Post by midoridensha »

alephnerd wrote: post #367
midoridensha wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a hostile immigration policy that is against permanency will do that. Why are you spreading lies? Permanent residency is really, really easy to get in Japan, unlike the US where you have to win a lottery.

Wages for SWEs are lower than other comparable countries in Europe, Canada, and APAC (SG, AU, NZ) and Japanese fluency (not a PR requirement but still needed to live in Japan) is hard to acquire. Why deal with the headache of learning a hard to learn language not spoken outside of a handful of islands in the Northern Pacific with a very insular culture when you can become a German or Canadian national for much less e…

The things you complain about do not equate to a "hostile immigration policy that is against permanency".

SWE wages are lower than the US, yes, but not Europe in my experience. Japanese fluency is not needed for PR or even citizenship (you do need a little ability for naturalization). You don't need to be fluent to live in Japan; most of the expats I know are not fluent at all.

German is also a very difficult language to learn, and you won't go far in Germany without it. It's much easier to be English-only in Japan than in Germany, in my experience.

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

#373

Post by alephnerd »

midoridensha wrote: post #372
alephnerd wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wages for SWEs are lower than other comparable countries in Europe, Canada, and APAC (SG, AU, NZ) and Japanese fluency (not a PR requirement but still needed to live in Japan) is hard to acquire. Why deal with the headache of learning a hard to learn language not spoken outside of a handful of islands in the Northern Pacific with a very insular culture when you can become a German or Canadian national for much less e…

The things you complain about do not equate to a "hostile immigration policy that is against permanency". SWE wages are lower than the US, yes, but not Europe in my experience. Japanese fluency is not needed for PR or even citizenship (you do need a little ability for naturalization). You don't need to be fluent to live in Japan; most of the expats I know are not fluent at all. German is also a very difficult languag…

I'll copy an earlier comment I made on a separate thread specifically with South Asia in mind, but I've seen similar dynamics in ASEAN as well. Also, I think you are an L1 Japanese speaker. If you're L1 is Indo-European, other Indo-European languages tend to be easier to learn.

Why go to Japan (in reality only Tokyo) where median software TC is around $60k [0] when you can go to Canada where median software TC is around $90k [1] and English speaking, let alone other English speaking and relatively easy to immigrate Western countries with large South Asian communities like the UK (95k) [2], Netherlands (87k) [3], Germany (77k) [4], Australia (100k) [5], Norway ($74k) [6], or Singapore (73k) [7].

[0] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater...

[1] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/canada

[2] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/united-...

[3] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/netherl...

[4] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/germany

[5] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/austral...

[6] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/norway

[7] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/singapo...

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

#374

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #297
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 -…

August 24, 2020 - "The questions that IBM's report aims to answer is how much of this pandemic-fueled online spending is a temporary shift and to what extent is it impacting longer-term forecasts? The answer, at least in this estimate, is that this pandemic pushed the industry ahead by around five years. The shift away from physical stores was already underway, but we've now jumped ahead in time as to where we would be if a health crisis had not occurred."

https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/24/covid-19-pandemic-accelera...

https://web.archive.org/web/20200824070131if_/https://www.ib...

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

#375

Post by makeitdouble »

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.

Europe makes it _costly_ to let an employee go.

You can get rid of 20 people for next monday if you want to, you’ll just pay the due amount as defined in the contract and the law. It’s also not some astronomical amount, worst case scenario I think it’s around 6 months of pay, which isn’t that far from what you’d pay for a non compete for instance.

PS: also unemployment is a complicated figure, it’s hard to tell how much any specific variable impacts it. Unemployment rate goes up and down while laws stay mostly the same, so singling out labor laws is mostly an opinion at this point.

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

#376

Post by asdff »

8note wrote: post #93
asdff wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The workers aren't the source of profits in all cases. Eg, a musician is a worker, but once they've written a song that you now iwn, you can sell infinite licenses to it, regardless of whether the musician is still being paid

But if you hire that musician, you can create more products you can license. The worker generates more revenue streams for you. This is why streaming companies are leasing soundstage space, to create more stuff to license themselves.

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

#378

Post by asdff »

ascotan wrote: post #207
asdff wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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```

Seems like a better solution would have been to shift that labor to more productive uses that can generate revenue, than to throw some of the oars off your boat to go faster.

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

#379

Post by asdff »

twblalock wrote: post #231
asdff wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really maximizing shareholder value though. In this case its like cutting off your leg and claiming you lost weight.

Amazon is one of the largest online retailers, and one of the largest vendors of compute capacity to other companies. They are better positioned to see a downturn coming than almost anyone else. What makes you think they got it wrong?

I don't think they got it wrong, I just think layoffs are foolish because staff generate the profits for your business. Does Amazon really need to cut costs? For 2022, revenue was up 15% year over year. The only thing bad going on with Amazon in this economy currently is their stock price, not their profitability or how much cash they have or how many workers they are able to afford.

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

#380

Post by asdff »

devmunchies wrote: post #220
asdff wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really maximizing shareholder value though. In this case its like cutting off your leg and claiming you lost weight.

if the employees that were cut were working on a product that was losing money, then its more akin to liposuction. Its not about the employee's skills either, it's the business unit. If you start cutting database or network engineers on the AWS team, now we're talking about cutting off limbs. Put another way, lots of startups are failing or are going to fail in this environment. Layoffs are like killing "internal sta…

Why is it better to lay people off than to just put that labor on something more profitable? If labor isn't productive that's not a labor issue, thats a management issue from them mismanaging their labor. It's a shame these workers have to suffer from being mismanaged.
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