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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

#491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And network, network, network!

In my whole career it was very rare that someone from my network helped. All calls for help would be met with a polite "sure" and then went missing. Some give me a lecture on how to lower my expectations or something else.

I think people have differing opinions on what a "network" means.

Some people define their network as professionals they know, even casually. That type of network isn't particularly useful. Other networks are people that you've provided some value to in some way so they know you're a valuable resource. Often, this means going out of your way to show value when there's little in it for you. That type of network is much more valuable because you've formed a relationship that goes beyond just "knowing a guy."

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

#492
post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

So FAANG is defined by nothing more than tech + high salary? Why wouldn't, say, a high paying fintech be included?

I think the real answer is that those companies were all high growth/high cap stocks. The guy who originally coined the term (Jim Cramer) has dropped Netflix from the list because their capitalization hasn't kept pace. (He also changed the acronym when Facebook was changed to meta)

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

#493
post #273

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 purpose of a corporation is to maximize the profits for shareholder above all else is a modern obsession

It is not "modern", depending on how you define the term. Ford v. Dodge was a case about it over 100 years ago.

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

#494

I have one word to partially explain this: Costco Or to elaborate: Recession => price sensitivity => costco Until a few months ago my first impulse was to just order everything from Amazon. Now instead my first impulse is to see if it’s available at Costco, and if it is, it’s likely to be at a significantly lower unit cost.

And you can feel better about shopping at Costco since they actually pay/treat their employees well.

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

#495
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…

> everything has a 3-5 year engineering life

Nope. 30+ years of experience here working for different software companies in 5 different countries. I still use most of the knowledge today that I learned 30 years ago.

Software development fundamentally changes very rarely. However software development fashion changes all the time. But the latest fashion is just a slightly different implementation of the same underlying fundamental things I already understand. It is just a slightly different flavour of ice cream.

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

#496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is usually the part where I shake their hands and wish them luck in their next endeavor. If they are not there because they love working with technology, there are other places for them to be.

Agreed. I personally have seen divorces and breakdowns of entire families and friend groups of my colleagues, but what is most important is making sure that they stay up-to-date with the latest technologies and look to further improve themselves for the company.

Most definitely! There is nothing more glorious than sacrificing your health, soul, and personal relationships to perfect that CRUD application your users are forced to use to keep their job.

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

#497

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…

So you didn’t make it through the interview because the interviewers are idiots? Not everyone at Amazon is an amazing dev but I can assure you Amazon isn’t the largest cloud provider because it’s stocked full of idiots.

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

#498
post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So FAANG is defined by nothing more than tech + high salary? Why wouldn't, say, a high paying fintech be included? I think the real answer is that those companies were all high growth/high cap stocks. The guy who originally coined the term (Jim Cramer) has dropped Netflix from the list because their capitalization hasn't kept pace. (He also changed the acronym when Facebook was changed to meta)

It has a life of its own way beyond Jim Cramer these days (also Jim Cramer is pretty terrible at being a pundit overall).

As for fintech companies, it's just a different field, with different norms, expectations, and overall pay structure. It's also a much smaller field in total.

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