Interesting that the math tells us AMZN average manager compensation is $250k? Seems.. low?
Maybe it is only the base pay? I.e excluding stocks
Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly
171–180 of 285 posts
Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly
#172I tend to agree with Amazon leadership here, as they increase the management layer on a company, the team accountability and ownership gets lost. A more horizontal company is able to do more (per capita) and faster. The tricky part is what to do when you scale, as you can't simply leave teams to their own devices as they will run their separate ways, so you do more and faster but in the wrong direction. But then agai…
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Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
The way people on HN sometimes talk about "management," you'd think the universal experience is 1% good, 9% benign, 90% actively seeking the downfall of civilization Managers seem like a good example of the "toupee problem" -- the ones you notice, and really remember, are the bad ones; the best, you might never see at all.
I think you also need to account for the amount of bad. Like a bad programmer can push terrible code, get caught at review and performance managed. But a bad manager can cause much more harm. An organisation with bad management can punch itself in the face very hard and cause significant issues. Like I have only seen a terrible management culture in 2 of my employees, but for 1 of them, it lead to: 30 or 40 careers d…
Yes managerial blast radius is an order of magnitude larger, and ability to measure performance lower / more lagged.
Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly
#174I don't understand the shit 'managers' get on here. I've been in this industry for 15+ years and with one or two rare exceptions every manager has been great. They respect my time, when I need something they're incredibly helpful, and they care about my career development. IMO the culling over managers over the past few years is really a way to make sure you don't have someone you can discuss career development, prom…
My experience has generally been that a group of intelligent adults are capable of both planning and steering the course of their development efforts as well as carrying out those development efforts. It's not unprecedented, or a particularly radical thesis: in university research labs, as a PhD student, post-doc, or professor, you manage yourself (PhD students meeting with their advisor once every few weeks). Sure,…
I worked in a University lab during grad school, then worked in the private sector for 16 years, and have been back working on research software for the last four years. All I'll say is that the software world should not look at the research world for best practices on delivering software products, except maybe to do the exact opposite of what they do.
Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly
#175I don't understand the shit 'managers' get on here. I've been in this industry for 15+ years and with one or two rare exceptions every manager has been great. They respect my time, when I need something they're incredibly helpful, and they care about my career development. IMO the culling over managers over the past few years is really a way to make sure you don't have someone you can discuss career development, prom…
I've had mostly bad managers. Most of them maybe wrote code for a year or two and think they understand team dynamics and how to build software. They then burden a good running team with whatever cult processes of the day is without taking any time to understand those team dynamics and which processes fit in those dynamics. It's like a coach that calls nothing but pass plays for a run centric team and makes the 180lb…
> I've had mostly bad managers. Most of them maybe wrote code for a year or two and think they understand team dynamics and how to build software. They then burden a good running team with whatever cult processes of the day
One of the most incompetent women I've ever worked with, a sociopath and pathological liar who to my knowledge never wrote a single line of code, is now a senior manager at Google inflicting pain on some unknown team.
Don't hate the player, hate the game.
Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
The way people on HN sometimes talk about "management," you'd think the universal experience is 1% good, 9% benign, 90% actively seeking the downfall of civilization Managers seem like a good example of the "toupee problem" -- the ones you notice, and really remember, are the bad ones; the best, you might never see at all.
I think you also need to account for the amount of bad. Like a bad programmer can push terrible code, get caught at review and performance managed. But a bad manager can cause much more harm. An organisation with bad management can punch itself in the face very hard and cause significant issues. Like I have only seen a terrible management culture in 2 of my employees, but for 1 of them, it lead to: 30 or 40 careers d…
In all fairness, a bad programmer can do a lot of damage. They can create attack vectors, destroy data and cause production outages. None of that is good. There are things in place to prevent that, but if those also fail, it'll be a busy week. Ask Crowdstrike.
https://ezo.io/blog/crowdstrike-outage-and-the-blue-screen-o...
Bad managers can also lead to a lot of bad programmers because all the good ones left. I reckon a bad manager is a multiplier of bad programmers. Bad is just bad no matter what level you are in.
Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've had mostly bad managers. Most of them maybe wrote code for a year or two and think they understand team dynamics and how to build software. They then burden a good running team with whatever cult processes of the day is without taking any time to understand those team dynamics and which processes fit in those dynamics. It's like a coach that calls nothing but pass plays for a run centric team and makes the 180lb…
> I've had mostly bad managers. Most of them maybe wrote code for a year or two and think they understand team dynamics and how to build software. They then burden a good running team with whatever cult processes of the day One of the most incompetent women I've ever worked with, a sociopath and pathological liar who to my knowledge never wrote a single line of code, is now a senior manager at Google inflicting pain…
>Don't hate the player, hate the game.
Oh, I can hate both. :) The (possibly) good news is now the free money train is gone, companies will actually have to pay attention to how their teams are working. The bad news is they might just chop off heads regardless of ability.
Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then you must have grow up at a particular time which didnt have them. There was a time period where it would be unusual to have a TV or VCR without them.
European TVs generally used SCART cables (a sort of 1970s analog HDMI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCART ), from the 1980s until HDMI took over. It was, indeed, fairly common for a TV or VCR or games console to have _only_ SCART. Odd standard; it had both composite and RGB lines, but also control lines, so, like HDMI-CEC, you could set it up so that your VCR couldn’t quite control your TV. It also supported daisy-c…
In Ireland (and I guess the UK), we'd have a lot of TVs with both. Usually they'd have multiple SCART connectors, but only a single RCA connector. It was common for stuff like games consoles to ship with a RCA to SCART adapter.
I will say in terms of physical connectors, by the later years it was quite common to have poor connectivity with SCART - stiff cables leaving the connector at an angle that would gradually lever it out of the socket, the flat pins that would break off after repeated insertions...
Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly
#179Note that 14,000 managers amounts to 13% of all managers at Amazon. So, this isn't them flattening the hierarchy and making teams autonomous, self-organizing squads. Or, at least, this article doesn't make that claim.
> Amazon is set to cut around 14,000 managerial positions by early 2025, aiming to save between $2.1 billion and $3.6 billion annually.
If the number is $2.1 to $3.6, I wonder why the headline went with $3.5. Weird.
Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
My experience has generally been that a group of intelligent adults are capable of both planning and steering the course of their development efforts as well as carrying out those development efforts. It's not unprecedented, or a particularly radical thesis: in university research labs, as a PhD student, post-doc, or professor, you manage yourself (PhD students meeting with their advisor once every few weeks). Sure,…
I worked in a University lab during grad school, then worked in the private sector for 16 years, and have been back working on research software for the last four years. All I'll say is that the software world should not look at the research world for best practices on delivering software products, except maybe to do the exact opposite of what they do.
I've been in academia for 10 years, now 'out in the real world' for 3 years - I agree with your assessment, the only project management strategy academia knows is 'just work longer hours'.