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Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly

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Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly

#191

Post by bialpio »

Clubber wrote: post #176
protocolture wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think the main difference is that programmers have (or should have) more transparent processes that they go through (code reviews, design doc reviews / signoffs, CI/CD to catch mistakes) compared to managers. Granted, I'm an IC so I know more about those - maybe managerial roles have similar ways to ensure you catch the "bad" early enough.

Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly

#192

Post by tensor »

donnachangstein wrote: post #168
Myrmornis wrote: post #135

Earlier 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,…

> in university research labs, as a PhD student, post-doc, or professor, you manage yourself That is not the real world. Turns out working for your brother-in-law they let you manage yourself too.

Yes, it is the "real world" for research, of which industry does nearly zero. Research pushes humanity forward. The sort of anti-intellectualism in your comment is part of what is causing the decline we are seeing in society today.

Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly

#193

Post by WalterBright »

bb88 wrote: post #24

I'm going to make the observation that politics in a company is caused by management. The more "politics" you have at a company, the more you pay in a "political tax". Effort which should benefit the company is delayed or made harder as employees have to bob and weave to get through the politics. I do believe if you want real culture change in a company, the best way to do it is to show managers the door, because tha…

Anywhere you have people, you have politics.

Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly

#195

Post by dyauspitr »

justmarc wrote: post #2

So they finally figured out most managers are not just useless, but literally a drag to the company and progress?

Well come back around. We will retry the flat structure again, realize that just leads to terrible throughput, team wise political battles and defacto leaders and start hiring the managers again. Just look at older industries that have reached a steady state because they’ve been around longer. No one is constructing a large building without a project manager, foremen or architects.

Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly

#196

Post by steveBK123 »

segmondy wrote: post #112
steveBK123 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely unique experience for you probably. I think career wise in 20 years I'd break down my experience as - 25% benign, 25% malign, 50% good. This is across 6+ companies, 15-20 managers.

Do the break down for developers.

Developers get marked to market quite quickly in annual reviews, if not sooner. Junk PRs, bad code, tons of bugs, acting like a jerk - it catches up fast. I've seen devs walked out the door in first 90 days of probationary period, or cut in their first annual review.

For a manager there is a longer leash as the things they can impact are harder to measure with long and variable lags. So it can take 3 years easily for an obviously bad manager to be dealt with.

Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly

#197

Post by johnohara »

Saving $2.1B to $3.6B means the 13,834 management positions pay between $150,000 to $260,000 per year. Plus benefits and other incentives I suppose.

These are not the workers who travel from warehouse to warehouse living in their RV's.

It makes me wonder if Amazon's AI implementations are starting to move up the food chain as was generally predicted for the U.S. economy 5 years ago.

Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly

#198

Post by Waterluvian »

basisword wrote: post #97

I 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 experienced so many kinds in 12 years including those who were incredible to work with and those who contributed nothing, and a bunch in between.

Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly

#199

Post by potato3732842 »

raincom wrote: post #65
bb88 wrote: post #24

I'm going to make the observation that politics in a company is caused by management. The more "politics" you have at a company, the more you pay in a "political tax". Effort which should benefit the company is delayed or made harder as employees have to bob and weave to get through the politics. I do believe if you want real culture change in a company, the best way to do it is to show managers the door, because tha…

Figuring out "bad management" is really a hard problem. The same problem exists in the government bureaucracies too.

All organizations. Nonprofits, militaries, religious orders, everything.

And anyone who tells you otherwise is either ignorant or lying.

Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly

#200

Post by steveBK123 »

bialpio wrote: post #191
Clubber wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think the main difference is that programmers have (or should have) more transparent processes that they go through (code reviews, design doc reviews / signoffs, CI/CD to catch mistakes) compared to managers. Granted, I'm an IC so I know more about those - maybe managerial roles have similar ways to ensure you catch the "bad" early enough.

I think its genuinely harder to measure the squishy productivity / collaboration / delivery output stuff that managers are supposed to own, but also .. managers aren't as incentivized to create processes to measure managers ..
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