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Amazon is said to plan to lay off thousands of employees

nytimes.com

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Re: Amazon is said to plan to lay off thousands of employees

#151

Post by datavirtue »

lbriner wrote: post #140

This is so completely normal in these industries that it is a non-headline. Companies that have so much cash they can employ 100K+ developers on top of goodness knows how many designers, PMs, POs etc. of course they hire and fire. They can afford to offer above-average conditions when the markets need it and everyone goes flocking there only to be surprised when their job is taken away at the next point the sharehold…

Wish I could figure out how to do an Ask HN for non-profit hiring. My previous attempts failed.

Re: Amazon is said to plan to lay off thousands of employees

#152

Post by whichfawkes »

zackmorris wrote: post #119

Something I've never understood about layoffs is that large corporations have nearly unlimited borrowing power. Amazon's market cap is just over $1 trillion, so it could probably borrow up to ~10x or $10 trillion against that (almost half the US GDP). Isn't that enough money to keep employees through a downturn? The flip side is that individuals have almost no borrowing power. The bottom 40% of the US population has…

Why would they keep employees through a downturn? They're profit-driven entities.

Of course they're going to dump externalities onto the public any chance they get, and we should strive to limit their capacity to do so... But in this case I'm not sure what you mean exactly? Nor do I understand what you mean about bringing antitrust because of layoffs? That sounds much more difficult to justify than most of the other reasons you might bring antitrust against these companies.

Re: Amazon is said to plan to lay off thousands of employees

#153

Post by [deleted] »

losteric wrote: post #91
mabbo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't see the path to profitability for Alexa. Like, sure, it's neat, but how does it make any money? Do they sell the devices at a profit? Does usage of the devices lead to increased sales on Amazon.com? Are those sales that wouldn't have taken place on the app/website otherwise?

> Does usage of the devices lead to increased sales on Amazon.com? Are those sales that wouldn't have taken place on the app/website otherwise? That seems reasonable. Customers can order directly through the device ("Alexa, order some toilet paper"), that's low friction and lets Amazon rank options to their benefit. Plus regularly using Alexa keeps Amazon primed (no pun intended) in the customer's mind so next time t…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon is said to plan to lay off thousands of employees

#154

Post by htrp »

heavyset_go wrote: post #139
__s wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an ads vector Eventually people will say "Alexa buy my groceries" Alexa will buy from the highest bidder

The only kind of people I imagine would be okay with a 3rd party blind shopping for them would be those who haven't seen the inside of a store in years because they have help that does all of their shopping and domestic work already.

it may also have to do with price insensitive customers.... if you doordash every meal, even groceries from the highest bidder remain cheap in comparison.

Re: Amazon is said to plan to lay off thousands of employees

#155

Post by y-c-o-m-b »

fred_is_fred wrote: post #98

For those of you in the business who missed 2000-2002 and/or to a lesser extent 2008, you have no idea what is coming. Good luck.

> to a lesser extent 2008

Why to a lesser extent? 2008 seemed far worse due to the overall recession impacts and the fact that it wasn't just tech companies. I got laid off from my tech job at a non-tech company for example. Both occurrences wrecked a lot of lives (mine included) though, I'll give you that.

Re: Amazon is said to plan to lay off thousands of employees

#156

Post by NineStarPoint »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #113
paxys wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been saying "the tech bubble is going to burst" since like 2011. The current round of job cuts and stock drops puts the industry back to ~mid 2020 levels. So it is definitely a correction, but hardly world ending.

Realistically they’ve been saying this since the 1950s

There was the dot com bubble burst in 2000, so there has actually been one. A few years after the 2008 crash sounds about right to when people started talking about tech bubbles again to me.

Re: Amazon is said to plan to lay off thousands of employees

#157

Post by wastedimage »

forbiddenvoid wrote: post #115
__s wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an ads vector Eventually people will say "Alexa buy my groceries" Alexa will buy from the highest bidder

This has been promised for a long time, but from my perspective, I don't really see this getting any closer to reality. But for what it's worth, I think there's a conflict of interest here. No one is going to believe that Amazon won't prioritize Fresh or Whole Foods for these orders - even if they don't.

How is this any different from a physical grocery store deciding on what to position on the ends of the rows due to incentive? People love to act like these problems brought on by the internet are new but all to often it's just an evolution.

Re: Amazon is said to plan to lay off thousands of employees

#158

Post by datavirtue »

z3rgl1ng wrote: post #147
zackmorris wrote: post #119

Something I've never understood about layoffs is that large corporations have nearly unlimited borrowing power. Amazon's market cap is just over $1 trillion, so it could probably borrow up to ~10x or $10 trillion against that (almost half the US GDP). Isn't that enough money to keep employees through a downturn? The flip side is that individuals have almost no borrowing power. The bottom 40% of the US population has…

My pet theory is this boils down to investor confidence. Executives get more comp in stock, cutting workers sends the right signal.

I second that. These big corps are willing to pay contractor rates for thousands of workers and use phycological manipulation to balance it all out with FTEs. Contractor rate is often double+ FTE pay for the people they work alongside. All of this so they can report lower "employee" headcount.

Re: Amazon is said to plan to lay off thousands of employees

#159

Post by jjtheblunt »

softwaredoug wrote: post #114
green-eclipse wrote: post #25

> In 2018, Echo and Alexa lost about $5 billion, said a person with knowledge of the finances. When Amazon introduced new devices this fall in an annual event, it was notably more restrained than past years when it had featured zany products like a sticky note printer and $1,000 home robot. $5B loss from one business line is a lot. Maybe this manner of investment inspired Zuck on the metaverse.

I never got the value of voice devices. In my experience you learn how to make them do 1-2 things. You learn a few patterns. But beyond that, even if they work 95% of the time, that 1 in 20 is annoying enough to make me not want to use it and just push a few buttons. Maybe case in point is using voice in the car. It should be the best, most obvious application. Yet aside from maybe texting, people want things like Ap…

> people want things like Apple CarPlay - a big touchscreen - not voice commands

I don't know the answer, but i wonder why you say that's what people want, since the high end BMW and Audi and Mercedes cars etc now all have their own voice commands to _avoid_ using the touchscreen (presumably for driving).

I wonder how they even get a survey that's representative.

Re: Amazon is said to plan to lay off thousands of employees

#160

Post by rr888 »

paxys wrote: post #81
noobermin wrote: post #16

There has been a lot of talk about a correction coming and a bubble bursting specifically in tech for years now. Is this it?

People have been saying "the tech bubble is going to burst" since like 2011. The current round of job cuts and stock drops puts the industry back to ~mid 2020 levels. So it is definitely a correction, but hardly world ending.

Its a difference now that there are waves of people coming to software from other industries. Its one of the few industries that does not require certification, pays great and you can pick up relatively quickly.
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