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Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

bbc.com

151–160 of 537 posts

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#151
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Killed semantics includes intentionality (and lack of), while dying by accident clearly removes any intentionality whatsoever. So it's much more faithful to truth to talk about accidents than by killing, even if both terms are semantically correct.

It’s intentional though see above comment by throw0101c. I agree that it’s a hard pill to swallow especially if you are US American.

> I agree that it’s a hard pill to swallow especially if you are US American.

Can you point me to countries that don't deflect agency in accident reporting?

Here's a headline from just today in the UK:

> Man airlifted to hospital after pedestrian hit

First line in of the story:

> A man has been airlifted to hospital after a vehicle hit a pedestrian.

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#153
post #84
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a difference?

The same difference as in "He died of heart attack" and "She was killed in a car crash".

Fox news spin: "his heart murdered him, as we all know all hearts secretly want to do to all of us".

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#154

I worked at AOL back when they did quarterly "staff reductions". They would go and hire lots of them right back; it was an accounting trick. Never mind the fact that families were affected and employees were constantly stressed near the end of every quarter. Those things don't matter, quarterly numbers do when growth has stalled.

This is a great tactic, where competent, good workers find a more stable job, and the ones unable to get a better job are then rehired. On one hand, you can bully them more, and they'll stay, on the other hand, they're so bad at their job, no one else wants them either.

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#155

> The company has more than 1.5 million employees across its warehouses and offices worldwide. > This includes around 350,000 corporate workers, which include those in executive, managerial and sales roles, according to figures that Amazon submitted to the US government last year. So roughly 4% of jobs in Amazon's corporate division disappeared. Not to downplay that the world/economy is in a bad state, but I don't th…

We all know that this is just the beginning to get us desensitized. The leaked plan is to fire up to 600,000 people. So roughly up to 40% of their workforce.

Hmmm, if you’re referring to this article[1], please make sure you’re accurately representing it.

Amazon is not firing up to 600,000 people, they plan to automate jobs to avoid hiring 600,000 people projected out to 2033.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/technology/inside-amazons...

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#156

From the article, Amazon has 1.5 million employees across offices and warehouses. With about 350,000 corporate employees in executive, managerial and sales. So that’s about 4% of the non-warehouse staff. What’s their normal staff turnover rate per year? I wonder if it’s another staff reduction (cos we over hired and want to remove people who didn’t impress) under the cover of improving business productivity using AI…

This is a lot. If you are in a company large enough, you surely know at least 20 people and one of them is gone. The earlier floated figure was even larger: 30K

I suppose it’s what you are used to. A company that I worked with had under 100 staff, very profitable but had a staff turnover of about 10% per year.

People joined, some stayed, some left and it was fine.

Perhaps as the departures were staff decisions not some faceless corporate executive, dropping X% cos that’s what he thinks would please the markets or his boss. Or the department is making profits but as much as his MBA says that’s sufficient. That’s the really depressing and infuriating aspect.

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recession is a term with a very defined meaning and that meaning does not include employment at all.

Yes, more accurately we're in the middle of an extremely shitty economy for everyone but stockholders

We've been in a global economic depression for more than a decade already.

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#159
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not catastrophic, but probably a sign that jobs are shrinking instead of growing and so good market information if you were thinking about getting promoted or moving around?

Rather, a correction for over hiring during periods of low-interest rates and excessive money printed which promoted & rewarded hiring just to be compretitive

> correction for over hiring during periods of low-interest rates

It's been three years since that though, and five years since covid. That's why we say "AI" now. Just make sure you don't say "executive incompetence".

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#160
post #98
post #4

These aren't "job losses", these are "firings". They aren't unfortunate accidents of external origin that happened to them, they are conscious internal decisions to let people go.

"job losses" is BBC editorializing. They do not use that term in their letter: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-workfor...

I sincerely suspect the BBC would only ever use "fired"/"firings" if the employees were being dismissed for conduct reasons, since that's the common usage in British English. I've been let go -- indeed, I've lost my job (it's the employees who suffer job losses, not the employer) -- but I've never been fired.
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