Strange times, but expected. At some point there was a recession to be expected at these code factories. The higher the scale the higher the impact. Old age car manufacturers used to employ entire cities and once they went bust these cities went bust with them. We need to be careful in allowing software factories to grow as large, else we risk the same fate. Personally I'd stay away from such employers (not that I have been an employee in a long time, but still if needed i'd avoid them).
Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees
161–170 of 292 posts
Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees
#162Just 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…
> You either memorized the solution to the random leetcode problem you get or you fail as far as I understand it.
I thought the point was to actually learn the theory behind the question so memorizing isn't necessary? Like for dp questions for example: it's easier to do them if you just visualize the dag
The whole "memorize every question" shtick is the wrong way imo. Just seems very time inefficient to me
Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees
#163AWS is barely touched. AWS AI even less so. A repeated lesson for me: always join a growing business for professional development, for career satisfaction, for financial reward, and for job security.
Amazon has been cutting a handful of their growing businesses aswell. Take for example Amazon Care. That team tripled in size YoY and was disbanded right before these layoffs. A growing business also needs a clear path to profitability.
My guess is they meant growing in terms of revenue, not headcount.
Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
“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.
Honestly the "right" answer in most of these types of questions is to search for a popular existing implementation. There is never a "we've got to solve this bubble sort algorithm in a locked room with no internet access" scenario. I get that they want to select for people who can solve problems by thinking their way through solutions with code, but I've never been convinced that solving leet code challenges is the way to do that. I'd also much rather solve problems without writing a bunch of code that has to be maintained, so engineers familiar with the tooling ecosystem for their platform of choice should be highly valued.
Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees
#1653% is 6 months of unregretted attrition for Amazon.
From what I've heard Amazon had laxed their URA targets during the peak pandemic years. This is likely the correction for this.
I think Amazon realized that their URA targets were creating massive headwinds when they were trying to hire.
Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees
#166Just 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…
No post body was provided.
Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees
#167Earlier 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…
> 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.
The culture fit for Amazon IMO comes down to
"are you willing to work nights and weekends on a moments notice no matter what?"
Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees
#168Earlier 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…
They're well known for having one of the lowest hiring bars of the major tech corporations, certainly out of the traditional "FAANG" they are by far the easiest to get hired at. N > F = G > Apple > Amazon in terms of hiring difficulty, from my impression. Until recently, their pay was also not as competitive and they had massive turnover rates.
No post body was provided.
Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees
#169Just 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 think he meant being an Amazon warehouse worker / delivery driver would get him by until he found something better.
Re: Amazon confirms corporate staff cuts that could hit 10k employees
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Retail has no profits. AWS is the profit center.
Retail has no profit after all expenses. One of those expenses is Alexa
What needs to be distinguished here is retail as in Amazon procuring and selling goods, or retail as in Amazon being a platform and another version of Aliexpress.
The former is a low single digit profit margin business, the latter probably has a decent profit margin.