Amazon has raised the number of jobs it plans to cut 18,000 • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon has raised the number of jobs it plans to cut 18,000

#71

Post by 0x4974h » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 3:07 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #58

0x4974h wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, they overhired but also those people hired got experience and a job. Do you have any idea how much stress and strain this can put on a person, especially if they are the provider for their family? Please don't make excuses for one of the richest companies in the world abusing their position and treating human beings like expendible machines.

I know it's hard. I don't wish it --but at the same time many people _got_ jobs _because_ companies overhired. Had they not, then many people would have had no job at all or would have had to take lesser jobs. Just imagine 25% tech across the board if they had kept their belts tight. How many people would have not gotten that tech job over the last two to three years? That would suck even more.

All of them would have found work elsewhere. Or what's even more likely -- already had work, but Amazon lured them with slightly higher comp.

Re: Amazon has raised the number of jobs it plans to cut 18,000

#72

Post by rco8786 » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 3:07 PM UTC

shmatt wrote: post #51

noodle wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were making record profits, they would be looking to expand their profitable divisions, would they not? They would likely not lay people off, but reorganize internally to move resources away from failing areas and into the clearly thriving, very profitable areas; or start something completely new. Hiring one good employee is expensive and difficult.

I feel like im stating the obvious but you can't just double the headcount on AWS and expect AWS profits to double The profitable divisions are probably still hiring, and there might be an option for some of the 18,000 to interview internally before getting terminated, some companies gave that option (30 day internal interview deadline). But you can't just move 3,000 Alexa employees to AWS and expect things to go smo…

Why then, did they make the decision to do so?

Re: Amazon has raised the number of jobs it plans to cut 18,000

#73

Post by simplotek » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 3:09 PM UTC

Sakos wrote: post #56

simplotek wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would any company fire anybody if they are generating money for them? Amazon has been cutting teams that either could not justify their existence or worked in money-losing investments. Alexa was a very public project getting the axe.

I still don't understand why they axed Alexa. It doesn't make any sense to me in the context of the rest of their business.

> I still don't understand why they axed Alexa.

Alexa was described as "a colossal failure" which lost 10 billion dollars last year alone.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-co...

Re: Amazon has raised the number of jobs it plans to cut 18,000

#74

Post by aketchum » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 3:13 PM UTC

jesuscript wrote: post #52

deltree7 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very naive take. When I invest in Amazon or any other company, I expect Amazon to invest in projects that give me a rate of return that exceeds the 4% that I can easily get from Treasury. If it can't, Amazon better return my money. Also, Amazon can't hoard employees that aren't being productive. It is better those employees work for startups and other endeavors. individually, it sucks short-time, but as a n…

Well, it has long been argued that stock buy back is an indicator a company that doesn’t know how to invest into its own r&d. Not to say that Amazon is the type of company that doesn’t know where to move it’s people, perhaps they don’t know at the moment and would rather save on the labor. Unless your company is in financial hardship, ditching headcount is similar to a stock buy back. You don’t know how to invest the…

stock buy backs are a more tax efficient version of a dividend (at least in theory)

Re: Amazon has raised the number of jobs it plans to cut 18,000

#75

Post by jacobsenscott » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 3:13 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #58

0x4974h wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, they overhired but also those people hired got experience and a job. Do you have any idea how much stress and strain this can put on a person, especially if they are the provider for their family? Please don't make excuses for one of the richest companies in the world abusing their position and treating human beings like expendible machines.

I know it's hard. I don't wish it --but at the same time many people _got_ jobs _because_ companies overhired. Had they not, then many people would have had no job at all or would have had to take lesser jobs. Just imagine 25% tech across the board if they had kept their belts tight. How many people would have not gotten that tech job over the last two to three years? That would suck even more.

Why do you assume they over hired, vs using this as a cludgal to force the remaining employees to work longer hours to pick up the slack, and drive down salaries at the same time?

Re: Amazon has raised the number of jobs it plans to cut 18,000

#76

Post by sumtechguy » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 3:15 PM UTC

hgsgm wrote: post #43

deltree7 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very naive take. When I invest in Amazon or any other company, I expect Amazon to invest in projects that give me a rate of return that exceeds the 4% that I can easily get from Treasury. If it can't, Amazon better return my money. Also, Amazon can't hoard employees that aren't being productive. It is better those employees work for startups and other endeavors. individually, it sucks short-time, but as a n…

> Also, Amazon can't hoard employees that aren't being productive. They absolutely can, and this is a major FAANG recruiting strategy.

It is the nolan bushnel way of locking up things. He would buy up capacity at different foundries to lock out competitors from building their own game system. When WB bought atari out they stopped doing that and we had a few dozen competitors within 2 years.

Basically suck all the energy out of the room and lock out any possible competitors. MS employed a similar strategy in the late 90s. FAANG does the exact same thing now.

Re: Amazon has raised the number of jobs it plans to cut 18,000

#77

Post by rileyphone » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 3:17 PM UTC

Sakos wrote: post #56

simplotek wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would any company fire anybody if they are generating money for them? Amazon has been cutting teams that either could not justify their existence or worked in money-losing investments. Alexa was a very public project getting the axe.

I still don't understand why they axed Alexa. It doesn't make any sense to me in the context of the rest of their business.

Because it’s an embarrassing product and Jassy doesn’t love it like Bezos.

Re: Amazon has raised the number of jobs it plans to cut 18,000

#78

Post by simplotek » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 3:28 PM UTC

jacobsenscott wrote: post #69

deltree7 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very naive take. When I invest in Amazon or any other company, I expect Amazon to invest in projects that give me a rate of return that exceeds the 4% that I can easily get from Treasury. If it can't, Amazon better return my money. Also, Amazon can't hoard employees that aren't being productive. It is better those employees work for startups and other endeavors. individually, it sucks short-time, but as a n…

Amazon's economy has only improved in the last 10 years. These firings are coordinated across large tech companies to reduce salaries and benefits, make employees work longer hours, and in general shift the power away from employees and back to the executives.

> Amazon's economy has only improved in the last 10 years.

This is a very ignorant take. In 2022 Amazon became the first company ever to lose $1trilion market value.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-09/amazon-hi...

In concrete terms, Amazon's stock prices tanked over 50% in less than a year.

This is not the hallmark of a healthy company.

> These firings are coordinated across large tech companies to reduce salaries and benefits, make employees work longer hours, and in general shift the power away from employees and back to the executives.

Your conspiracy theory ignores the fact that until very recently all companies were on a hiring binge without having any business case beyond "growth", not to mention that they are moving jobs overseas for years replacing highly paid engineers in the US with modestly paid engineers in India and Europe.

Re: Amazon has raised the number of jobs it plans to cut 18,000

#79

Post by 778hbff » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 3:42 PM UTC

shmatt wrote: post #31

honestduane wrote: post #26

This is just corporate gaslighting at this point; There is no legitimate reason so many very profitable tech companies need to fire so many when we are not even in a recession according to the United States Government and the treasury and the banks, and its not like they are not making record profits. They cant say "we are making record profits" and in the same breath say "we need to fire people to survive" that's no…

Making profits does not have to mean funding teams that aren't generating anything significant in terms or product and/or income. Many of these companies have a small portion making most of the profits, and all the others eating them up (see: VR, Voice). You can do it the Amazon way, cutting products that are bleeding money, or the Salesforce way asking all units to cut 10% across the board, but just keeping failed p…

> Many of these companies have a small portion making most of the profits, and all the others eating them up (see: VR, Voice).

Depends on your time horizon. You can fire allof engineering tomorrow. Costs will drop dramatically, revenue stays where it is. But over time things will stop working and your competiton will take over with new features and being able to keep the lights on when something breaks. Same applies to many departments. Short time dispensible, long term absolutely not.

Ask the Twitter staff. First days the toilets were still clean..

Re: Amazon has raised the number of jobs it plans to cut 18,000

#80

Post by P_I_Staker » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 3:55 PM UTC

capableweb wrote: post #20

chasd00 wrote: post #19

Why did so much tech go on a pandemic hiring spree? Did they think it was going to last forever? I don't understand all everyone ( in tech ) made the same mistake. "oh let's increase our headcount by 25% in response to a pandemic that is mutating and gradually lessoning in severity while vaccines and other medicines are dramatically increasing in efficacy... but it's going to last forever." what am i missing? How did…

What makes you think it was a mistake? Could very well have been planned. "Lets hire like crazy in order to meet demand, and when the demand disappears again, do layoffs". Probably someone calculated something somewhere saying "If we hire 25% more people to take advantage of the increased demand, we'll earn more profits even with layoffs with heavy severances for everyone after X months".

There's a more simple explanation. Companies were hiring because they thought they were gearing up for a bunch of work and that there was gonna be a war for talent. I could be wrong, but at least Zuck seemed like a true believer in what he was doing; is there anyone that questions his over attachment to the Metaverse? (I understand he may have known this was a risk; possibly other execs were more aware, and looking forward to it).

More to the point, it seems that companies were hiring because other companies were too. They didn't want to miss out on the party. Not an economist, but you see this behavior all the the time in markets.

Then after the euphoria wears off they notice:

  1. Ditching a lot of unprofitable segments starts to look attractive. The chance for   growth could be pretty slim, especially in a slow market.

  2. Some of these people are raking in massive salaries for jobs they could get anyone in to do. It looked to many people like the strategy was to buy up people to keep them off the market... not shocking to see the change in heart, which lead to:

  3. All these activities were giving employees quite a bit of leverage, and potentially calling into question any managers that might have had "hold down the fort" roles.

I remember having these conversations last summer. It wasn't 100% clear what was going to happen, but this wouldn't have been surprising; people knew. They did about the housing crash, too. It's popular to act like this was discovered by a lone genius, who goes against the crowd.

My dad with no connections and basic financial literacy, with some eyes on real estate, predicted this since around 2000-2004. I remember growing up and hearing about the certain housing crash that was coming that was so obvious anyone could see it. (sure some specific points of failure may not have been obvious, but we knew what was going to happen)