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Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

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Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#141

Post by foostepsndpics »

Zaheer wrote: post #92

Alexa is to Amazon what Metaverse is to Meta. Both are bets to create a new platform as they feel threatened by Apple & Google's dominance on mobile. Meta should take note. Alexa is widely adopted (# of devices) but has little engagement and still hasn't broken outside of the most primitive use-cases (play music, remind me, etc)

That may be a flawed analogy.

Meta tried to create a new market with the Metaverse, but Amazon overhired in their Alexa department because they were surprised by the financial success of smart speakers and wanted to double down.

Anecdotally, I often see the trashcan speakers in peoples' kitchens, even if people usually say that they only use it as a fancy radio alarm clock.

I rarely meet people who have tried Oculus' recent hardware, and those who have are usually gadgetheads who keep it in a closet as a party novelty. There was a spike in interest when Valve released the Vive and Oculus was an independent entity, but that was more about gaming than social experiences, and it seems to have tapered off in my social circles.

Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#142

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

runlevel1 wrote: post #76
vaidhy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be asked to dig holes and close them up again - a completely useless work and you can be given an ever increasing quota to do it with the threat that one of the holes you dig might have your body in it (extremely stressful and ruthless). The challenge most of the people outside of Amazon do not realize is that micro-service architecture imposes a heavy penalty on team co-ordination, esp. as the software matur…

> micro-service architecture imposes a heavy penalty on team co-ordination This is, by far, the hardest scaling problem in SaaS: How do we divide responsibilities amongst our (code|services|teams) efficiently? You can only grow each so much before they become unwieldy to manage. Divide scope too much and communication becomes complex. Divide along the wrong abstraction and you get duplication, overlap, and confusion…

I think the answer is kind of obvious, but disappointing: the way to scale is to both divide responsibility while simultaneously sharing it. The way to do this well is to work on the basics: communication, training, quality, study, operations, continuous improvement.

There is no magical model for this, no buzzword, no single practice, because different businesses and use cases need to be adapted to it. But there's 70+ years of study into methods to do this, and I believe they're taught by all the business schools. It's just nobody wants to do the work.

....On the other hand, nobody teaches MBAs how drastically different tech is than other industries, and thus how you run your "factory floor" has to be different. But the basic principles above should still be applied; they just have to be adapted to the industry and work. What one should not do is just accept things however that industry does it, because they probably aren't doing the above principles either.

Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#143

Post by brokencode »

chairhairair wrote: post #135
bgro wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you help explain why the general consensus seems to consider Amazon as a just given backup and easy interview path (but the hard part is the actual job crunch apparently)? They still do leetcode screening don’t they? IMO they’ve been harder than the others because the process is so automated that you either pass or fail on the code test. There’s no tech interviewer to give you a hint unless they changed that re…

“You either memorized the solution to the random leetcode problem you get or you fail as far as I understand it.” No? You can actually use code to solve problems. Don’t buy into the defeatism surrounding leetcode interviews.

I think the point is that it can be hard to legitimately solve some of those tricky leetcode-style problems under time pressure, with no access to outside resources, and with the knowledge that somebody is judging your every move.

Memorizing the common problems gives you a big leg up on being able to successfully pass an interview.

Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#144

Post by tick_tock_tick »

bgro wrote: post #123
no_wizard wrote: post #78

Just wanted to say: I feel for anyone impacted by this I truly hope that they're able to land on their feet and Amazon does right by them and gives a healthy severance. Least they could do. Another quirk of this story in terms of how this makes me feel is that this makes me sad in a strange way: Amazon was my "fallback" job if my current job ever bit the dust and I couldn't find anything else relatively quickly. Seem…

Could you help explain why the general consensus seems to consider Amazon as a just given backup and easy interview path (but the hard part is the actual job crunch apparently)? They still do leetcode screening don’t they? IMO they’ve been harder than the others because the process is so automated that you either pass or fail on the code test. There’s no tech interviewer to give you a hint unless they changed that re…

> They still do leetcode screening don’t they?

I mean that's a big part of what makes it so easy. Near zero "culture fit" or anything random you just need to solve easy problems.

Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#145

Post by bilbo0s »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #139
twelve40 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alexa was the absolute hotness when it was first introduced. There were so many claims how it's going to take over the entire world that I started to question my own sanity. Imagine if you joined that growing business at the time? Same here, what is AWS AI and how can you tell that apart from a hyped-up diversion? Clearly, anything "AI" is extremely overhyped currently, but how can you tell which one is real.

The real trick to job safety is to join a core (but profitable) organization. I doubt many (if any) cuts are being made in EC2/EBS/S3/etc.

This.

Be willing to do the boring, unsexy stuff that is at the foundation of the business. You'll never be the hotshot, but it's extremely unlikely that you would get caught up in layoffs like this.

Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#146

Post by black_13 »

erehweb wrote: post #5

I found this comment from an anonymous tech industry insider interesting: "Amazon is very, very bloated. So there's lots of people there but they're not providing a lot of value so they're first on the chopping block." This is counter to what I have heard about Amazon, which is that it is a ruthless environment where low performers are stack ranked out of the company. Does anyone have any insight?

No post body was provided.

Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#147

Post by zwkrt »

bgro wrote: post #123
no_wizard wrote: post #78

Just wanted to say: I feel for anyone impacted by this I truly hope that they're able to land on their feet and Amazon does right by them and gives a healthy severance. Least they could do. Another quirk of this story in terms of how this makes me feel is that this makes me sad in a strange way: Amazon was my "fallback" job if my current job ever bit the dust and I couldn't find anything else relatively quickly. Seem…

Could you help explain why the general consensus seems to consider Amazon as a just given backup and easy interview path (but the hard part is the actual job crunch apparently)? They still do leetcode screening don’t they? IMO they’ve been harder than the others because the process is so automated that you either pass or fail on the code test. There’s no tech interviewer to give you a hint unless they changed that re…

I worked at Amazon for 5 years and was in over 100 interview loops. Amazon won't hire you if you don't have the skills, but they are/were relatively lax in hiring compared to other big FAANG companies. It is also helpful that they historically have been such a huge and growing company that if you have the skills and the basic interview techniques down, they will try pretty hard to find a place for you. Amazon at least used to also offer a down-leveled role if it was obvious that you were a good programmer but couldn't prove to the capricious hiring loop that you were going to perform at the level you were applying for. This means if you are a mid-senior level programmer that interviewing for Amazon is kind of a slam-dunk in the sense that you'll definitely get hired even if for a lower level.

I have thought similar to the grand-parent commenter about having Amazon as a fallback in the Seattle area. Not my ideal but somewhere that is always recruiting me and would pay the bills if the smaller company I am working for went under.

Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#148

Post by warner25 »

kenjackson wrote: post #88
bitL wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was way before Jobs, IBM was using it ages ago.

Isn't this part of the premise of the book Hackers? Haven't read it in like 25 years, but that's what I vaguely remember.

I don't recall this coming up in Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, but it was definitely in The Soul of A New Machine, the story about Data General trying to build their first 32-bit computer.

Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#149

Post by qqtt »

ronnier wrote: post #93
Zaheer wrote: post #92

Alexa is to Amazon what Metaverse is to Meta. Both are bets to create a new platform as they feel threatened by Apple & Google's dominance on mobile. Meta should take note. Alexa is widely adopted (# of devices) but has little engagement and still hasn't broken outside of the most primitive use-cases (play music, remind me, etc)

They'd probably get a lot more use if they opened up the API so we can send commands locally to say, play an mp3.

They have a Alexa skill development kit where you can make your own commands but yeah, as far as I know it’s all cloud based:

https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/ge...

Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees

#150

Post by wollsmoth »

bgro wrote: post #123
no_wizard wrote: post #78

Just wanted to say: I feel for anyone impacted by this I truly hope that they're able to land on their feet and Amazon does right by them and gives a healthy severance. Least they could do. Another quirk of this story in terms of how this makes me feel is that this makes me sad in a strange way: Amazon was my "fallback" job if my current job ever bit the dust and I couldn't find anything else relatively quickly. Seem…

Could you help explain why the general consensus seems to consider Amazon as a just given backup and easy interview path (but the hard part is the actual job crunch apparently)? They still do leetcode screening don’t they? IMO they’ve been harder than the others because the process is so automated that you either pass or fail on the code test. There’s no tech interviewer to give you a hint unless they changed that re…

Uh, they definitely ask you a bunch of questions and you basically need to speak to their leadership principles. Being good at leetcode alone can't get you in, or that's the impression I've gotten from friends who work there. But I suppose it depends.
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