Good riddance, there's too many layers of management for a company that touts "It's always day 1", and once you become a manager you can only fail upwards.
Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly
211–220 of 285 posts
Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly
#212Interesting that the math tells us AMZN average manager compensation is $250k? Seems.. low?
$250K is low: Kind of a "Peak HN" comment :). I was actually going to say it seems kind of high. This looks like it's globally, not just in high COL areas, and across all levels of management, not just Directors and VPs. Kind of surprising the average is that high. Then again, this is HN, where they say the "average" tech worker in the world makes $400K and drives a Ferrari.
I make more than 250k as an engineer in a small startup. The only reason to join a FAANG is to make much more than 250k. According to levels.fyi an average senior SDE at amazon makes $412k total comp.
Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly
#213I 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…
You should count your lucky stars.
I had two good managers, the rest ranged from innocuous to malevolent. One manager even cursed me for refusing to approve an engineering deviation to allow a passenger plane to fly when the wing composite was delaminating. He said he went through the trouble of preparing the pseudo legal document and how dare I refuse to sign. I told him a) I was not the SME on wings as I was an engine guy b) if this was such a no brainer why didn’t he or the SME sign their approval. This was when I worked at a major airline and wasn’t the only egregious thing I had experienced. This incident was one of the reasons I switched to IT because in software it was unlikely you could be criminally held responsible for such irresponsible behavior.
Anyways. My guess is if I had signed off the pilot would not have accepted the plane during his preflight. Then an investigation would have started on who would have signed off on such a thing.
Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, you can always push that admin and coordination and communication work down to the ICs. I'm sure you'll be thrilled to get that added to your plate.
Are you talking about the same admin and coordination required to keep 10 layers of management updated? Easy enough to solve, just remove a few layers.
Sure, and while if you want it to stick, you'll have to get rid of the CEO and the shareholders, too.
Those 10 layers of management work for them, not you. That's why they exist.
Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correct. It's fundamentally a problem that cannot be completely solved. People are too messy.
Then managers are only a salary line -- one that can go away apparently.
Not being completely solvable doesn't mean that giving up entirely is a better option.
We don't stop all crime, but that doesn't mean we stop funding all police and jails.
Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly
#216They’ll just hire more managers again in 18months
Even if they do, they've culled those that they deemed weren't a good fit, possibly changing the hiring criteria. If the criteria for both is rational, purging can be very good for an org, and the employees. Crap managers make jobs suck for everyone involved. edit: I'll say, I've only ever left a job because of a manager. Shortly before leaving my current job, due to a crap manager, the previous manager was fired. Th…
> they've culled those that they deemed weren't a good fit…
I think it’s worthwhile challenging this assumption. In a layoff, with that many people, I don’t think you can say much beyond that the company doesn’t want to pay them anymore.
Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly
#217I'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…
Politics happen due to people. There is this myth that you don't need management or leadership at all. But there are enough examples of bad managed teams and bad self directed teams that its pretty obvious that politics happen in the absence of management.
Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly
#218Earlier 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…
Fair, however if a bad programmer isnt subject to code review, thats sort of a management issue.
Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly
#219I 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…
> 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, promotion, and pay increases with
That’s the point, surely
Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
imagine comparing management at a small research lab to a multi-national corporation. Such unfounded hubris.
If you view the university as one large company pushing research forward on many fronts then it is about the same
Universities are not a company model so the comparison is extremely disingenuous.