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Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

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Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#191

Post by cmrdporcupine »

djmips wrote: post #177
germanjoey wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the new performance process?

From what I've heard - It's been changed to a yearly (instead of twice a year) and apparently there's been pressure to rate people at a higher standard with a simple 5 level impact score. 'Not enough impact'. 'Moderate impact'. 'Significant impact'. 'Outstanding impact'. 'Transformative impact'. This feels kind of like something akin to a bell curve with the peak in Significant. I assume the culling will be from the…

Google perf ratings have always been this bizarre thing where "Meets Expectations" was considered a bad review and you better get your act together. (Shame on you for just doing your job.) That curve doesn't sound too different, just new names for same old same old. Like a 1-5 where you'd be disappointed with anything below 4 but the names always had euphemistic cheerful names even when it was a shit review.

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#192

Post by CoastalCoder »

chihuahua wrote: post #141
WalterBright wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I long ago concluded that the way to make pots o' money is to: 1. go out for a walk. Offer the first good looking man a CEO-ship of your new company. 2. pay him $$$$$ 3. hire loads of people 4. fire them all 5. goto 3

In this scheme, where do the pots 'o money come from?

Alexa integration?

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#193

Post by gwright »

haimez wrote: post #143
gwright wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't the way a business works. There is no intrinsic value to "staff", positive or negative. The value comes from the way staff (or any other resources) is utilized. Building twice as many widgets by building and staffing a second factory could have a huge negative value if there is no demand for twice as many widgets in the market, for example.

Staff does have a negative intrinsic value- they are paid salaries. If (and only if) the business can deliver on some arbitrary stated goals, it’s more valuable if it can do so with fewer people on staff.

I was obviously referring to the net change in business value. Additional employees can be result in a net negative or a net positive return on investment depending on how they are utilized. That was what I was trying to communicate.

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#195

Post by CoastalCoder »

bencpeters wrote: post #46
discodave wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like Amazon. Back in the day they managed to avoid 'layoffs' by transferring thousands of people from Fire Phone -> Alexa. They somehow avoided layoffs from shutting down Prime Air (drones, not 767s), even though that had a lot of employees. They're pretty good at getting people to leave without doing 'layoffs'. Heck, if you believe that they've always had 5-10% 'unregretted attrition' targets, which I do, and…

Prime Air is not shut down, we're working on it and expanding. Can't post too many details, but we are actively delivering to customers in test markets today. A publically released video from a few months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bDyeUiWL3M&ab_channel=amazo... Source: I'm an SDE at Prime Air.

[flagged]

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#196

Post by WhiteBlueSkies »

swellguy wrote: post #135

The fed generated money like Germany in WW2. Unfortunately people at tech companies don't understand the so called laws of supply and demand and just hired people with no logical thinking at all.

Based on what evidence do you suggest that they hired people with "no logical thinking". You are part of the problem. I'm sick and tired of engineers being ultra skeptical about the skills of other engineers. It leads to constant peacocking.

In the teach world, if you didn't blog about it you don't know it.

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#197

Post by jethro_tell »

asdff wrote: post #63
sys_64738 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A business is run to maximize shareholder value. Cutting costs is part of that equation.

It's not really maximizing shareholder value though. In this case its like cutting off your leg and claiming you lost weight.

It might be. If you pay in stock, juicing the stock number of you can could save thousands on the backend in wages paid out in total shares.

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#198

Post by TrackerFF »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #66
m00x wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make it to L5/6 without being a good engineer. I interviewed several Uber/Amazon engineers and they couldn't solve a simple problem (very easy problem that most bootcamp grads could do). A lot of them get there by being interviewed by other bad engineers, and just float when the market is strong, or use politics to get in a good position. A guy at my company just merges library upgrade PRs blindly. That's all…

> I interviewed several Uber/Amazon engineers and they couldn't solve a simple problem (very easy problem that most bootcamp grads could do). I don't know you personally, and I don't want to start a flame war here, but if there's one thing FAANG senior engineers are good at, it's solving simple coding problems in interviews If you're saying they can't actually proactively get useful work done on their own, or quickly…

Depends on how long you've been in a position, and if you've had time to practice.

5 years out of college, worked in a single place all those years, without ever touching data structures or algorithms under the hood? Yes, I can absolutely see even experienced programmers stumble on relatively "easy" questions.

But that's just the gatekeeper to get them inside the door. You could be a good engineer without knowing how to find the optimal solution to some niche problem, on the spot.

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#199

Post by CoastalCoder »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #64

"Amazon had about $35 billion in cash and cash equivalents and long-term debt of about $59 billion at the end of the third quarter ended Sept. 30." https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/amazon-secu...

I'm not in finance, but I suspect the rates of return on the cash and the debt are quite relevant.

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#200

Post by etempleton »

VincentEvans wrote: post #36

Here’s a thought that has been percolating in my mind for a bit since these “market adjustments” began a month or two back. Somehow at some point, in what perhaps could be blamed on the ever-hated mass produced MBAs - companies got really comfortable with the “it’s not personal, it’s just good business” of letting go of their employees for a slightest reason, or sometimes for no reason at all - just to make it look t…

No problem hiring and firing. Hiring for no reason. Setting a random employee growth target and then hiring to that level to only then fire the same amount of people a couple of years later. It is irresponsible growth targets followed by irresponsible cut backs.
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