Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned • Hacker News Board

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

#391

Post by Doxin » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 8:00 AM UTC

capitalsigma wrote: post #388

rob74 wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even think "pain to keep employees" is the right word here - Amazon for instance is still highly profitable, it's just that the profits went down a bit (which is to be expected if the economy is worse). But they're still laying off people just to make the bottom line look even better...

Believe it or not, Amazon is not a charity. I don't know why you expect them to hold on to employees who are evidently a loss to their bottom line.

That's assuming the downturn is 100% explained by employees underperforming. It's more likely that market forces outside of these employees control caused the downturn.

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

#392

Post by baner2022 » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 8:04 AM UTC

I am sort of surprised that FAANG / MAanG companies are laying off … didn’t they hire the best with multiple rounds of interviews… how did they go so wrong …. Yet they permeat this paradigm of interview similar to the feudal days when a jester out of a thousand applicants gets the court appointment as they were no other jobs in the land . Would someone be brave to share if folks built systems without knowledge of data structures and algo that delivered value but after hiring experts the companies were shedding market share … eh!

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

#393

Post by birdymcbird » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 8:11 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #242

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…

"It's a recession when your neighbor loses their job. It's a depression when you lose yours." I think this is just availability bias. Ordinary people - the ones who aren't glued to CNBC or the WSJ - tend to measure the strength of the economy by the job market for their friends and neighbors. The job market, right now, is pretty strong for ordinary people. Hence it "feels" like boom times, and that all the chicken li…

> The popular narrative is that these are just a bunch of bloated tech companies laying off surplus employees that don't do anything useful.

Wrong. not only surplus employees but surplus elites.

in recent years, big tech paid bloated compensations to people producing little or no economic value. saw first hand professional managers dont understand tech get hired by friends and collectively engage in empire building and building head count. easy promotion game.

engineers create complexity for smallest problem and launch new services. get promoted. then they get hell out and move to new team. managers willingly accept tech debt to justify more head count hire more managers and engineers under them.

you tell us what innovation come out of amazon fire alexa kindle. same thing they sold 5 years ago same hardware maybe little bit better speaker. why pay for increasing army of engineers? and me just discussing amazon devices.

how many engineers you need to run website? has shopping gotten better in 5 years? No! it way worse, too many ads.

this a massive grift. Most value amazon gets is these people don’t start their own company and threat amazon with competition.

big tech took advantage of cheap or free money from US Fed and created class of elites. Now the game ending for now anyway

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

#394

Post by hjgjhyuhy » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 8:22 AM UTC

zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #352

andirk wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wonder how people who are only in the room when things happen have any pride in their work and aren't embarrassed at their lack of production. A couple jobs ago was people who put most of their effort in to making sure their group of shitty engineers wasn't found out. It was a lot of work! Since they were all about quantity of people over any quality, they had to keep hiring more people, so there was a lot o…

I’ve never understood the people who make no effort to better themselves - they work in technology, everything has a 3-5 year engineering life, they should always be preparing for the next thing. People often can’t control what technologies their employer uses, but if they have solid fundamentals and I can tell they have tried to learn things on their own, more often then not I’ll give them a chance, and it usually w…

Some people have a family, or otherwise time consuming personal lives, which does limit the ability to learn new things outside of work. I wouldn’t really blame them for not ”bettering themselves” if they don’t get to do that on paid company time.

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

#395

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 8:34 AM UTC

kcb wrote: post #350

sneak wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#396

Post by silisili » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 8:40 AM UTC

i_have_an_idea wrote: post #96

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…

I have no opinion on the MBA bit, but I think you're spot on about people starting to treat companies the way the companies are treating them. ~10 years ago, when I got my first job, I was in the minority, pretty much the only person cynical about big companies' claims how "people are our most important resource", how important is the company "culture" and all of that corporate kumbaya. And, at that point, the vast m…

Nearly 20 years ago, when I was trying to find HR for my first day, there was an older man talking with them already. He said, and I quote, 'Fuck you all, I got your exit interview right here' while grabbing his crotch. He turned to walk away, smirked at me, and said 'what? I'm retired now.'

Point being, I don't think you were the only one who didn't love the company 10 years ago.

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

#397

Post by rgavuliak » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 8:43 AM UTC

makeitdouble wrote: post #375

ptero wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

Lot of devs in Europe do contract work though. It's an employee disguised as a contractor so mostly as grey area, but it's becoming more common.

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

#398

Post by sacnoradhq » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 8:54 AM UTC

5%. Amazon is enormous.

A well-placed source mentioned AWS is marginally/unaffected.

For the past 3 years, megacorps have been hiring like money was free and OpEx doesn't matter.

The danger in downturns is over-contracting and destroying current and future capabilities.

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

#399

Post by ThrowawayR2 » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 8:55 AM UTC

metadat wrote: post #133

gwright wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost as if TANSTAAFL.

First encounter with this initialism. TANSTAAFL / TINSTAAFL "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/tanstaafl.asp Also, if I may add: I wish there were more substance in your comment. This non-sequitur was disappointing.

Most hackers would already know TANSTAFFL through Robert Heinlein's works?

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

#400

Post by college_physics » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 8:55 AM UTC

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…

When times are good (new technology being invented / adopted / marketed) nobody asks tough questions: the corporate structure somehow orchestrates production, new goods or services are being created, value is added, everybody participating in a meaningful way in the bonanza is "happy".

These periods don't last too long: Technologies are tried but discarded, or are too easy to reproduce and lead to saturation, or competition reaches fierce levels etc.

In "stable" or lean times the corporate structure becomes a ruthless spreadsheet optimisation exercise that focuses on exploiting every possible arbitrage (e.g., tax regimes, employee loyalty, overseas labor cost differences etc) to maintain the monetary profitability projections. This leads to endless corporate restructurings, financial engineering and other zero or negative sum games.

The lifecycle of a human being, the social and emotional needs to belong, contribute, feel appreciated and helpful, to create value when young and able, in order to receive value when old and frail. These things are not part of the corporate structure contracts. Neither is in any sense a sustainable planet (but thats part of another rant).