251–260 of 498 posts
The funny thing is like 8 months ago amazon was hiring engineers with 4 years of experience for 350-400k. These people aren’t even good programmers. And now they need to cut.
The funny thing is like 8 months ago amazon was hiring engineers with 4 years of experience for 350-400k. These people aren’t even good programmers. And now they need to cut.
If they can make L5/6 to get that salary then they're probably pretty good actually
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they can make L5/6 to get that salary then they're probably pretty good actually
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazon and all of these companies are laying people off based on future forecasts, not based on the current economy. Regardless of if people are first, no company wants teams sitting around not doing anything. I've been laid off, it sucks, but just because Amazon is making money today doesn't mean it will be tomorrow.
What’s unusual about this cycle though is that it’s the fear of a recession due to fed policy that is causing companies to cut back. In past cycles fed policy caused a recession nobody predicted and companies suddenly found their earnings in the toilet and made enormous cuts in head count, R&D spending, etc. Something about this cycle and these cuts feels I dunno, manufacturered or something. Like are 7k high paying…
It's absolutely manufactured to the extent that the Fed is intentionally trying to slow demand (aka: cause a recession) in order to stop inflation. The problem is, a large portion of inflation (some indicators are half) is simple price gouging, which Fed measures won't impact, and another large portion is simple ongoing supply chain problems, which the Fed also can't really fix. All they can do is force a recession.
> He added that the majority of the cuts are on the retail and recruiting areas of Amazon. How large would their recruiting organization be, and what percent do companies cut when they foresee that they won't need to proactively recruit for a couple years (because there will be enough job seekers who will apply to listed positions). I assume they'll still need people to process candidates, but that won't be as many a…
Are there enough companies that can afford all the tens of thousands of fired workers SV salaries if all these big companies are firing them?
Prevent artificial unavailability of jobs. When you release 17k people into the work force you can be sure Amazon will be slow to fill the gap it created. So it holds up hiring. Then those 17k people are going to flock to whatever available role can be acquired. This will extend the interviewing processes and make it harder.
Tech companies and unfair hiring practices are what are leading to our financial collapse.
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…
That said, I had some minor hopes for the current post-Covid world, because it, however briefly, looked like employees understood what standing together meant and that WFH is something that can easily be done in some positions ( and is artificially dosed as a reward to special ones ).
For better or worse, the coming recession will confirm whether I had hoped for too much.
FWIW, I am staying mostly remote ( as is most of my team now ). I already told no HR once. I am getting more and more comfortable daily with more otherwise uncomfortable situations despite clearly changing winds and better corporate propaganda ( they did learn from initial fiascos ).
This is worrisome - joined Amazon ~4 months ago because it seemed like the most sensible thing to do considering my immigration status. Have one last attempt left at the H-1B lottery; PERM is underway but no hopes of getting it finished before STEM OPT runs out. Was thinking of getting married to my girlfriend soon, but not too sure about that anymore (she's in the 3rd year of her PhD so she cannot really move with m…
How did you go from 9 to working age without getting residency in the US or another country?
> He added that the majority of the cuts are on the retail and recruiting areas of Amazon. How large would their recruiting organization be, and what percent do companies cut when they foresee that they won't need to proactively recruit for a couple years (because there will be enough job seekers who will apply to listed positions). I assume they'll still need people to process candidates, but that won't be as many a…
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…
People are an important resource, certainly for a company like Amazon, and probably the most expensive too. But I don't understand the argument -- you don't just throw money around like that on any other resource.
Certainly up until this year it was a seller's market in tech and I saw a lot of movement to chase bigger salaries (which is fine and people should try to get what they want while the getting's good).
> And this brings me to my main point - I think years of this has had an unexpected side-effect the companies never signed up for: people started treating companies they way companies treating people and we are starting to see the results - quiet quitting, oft bemoaned lack of loyalty, job hopping, etc. Now I am not saying it’s all new, but at least in my observation it’s peaking now and my thesis is these things are connected.
I'm not sure it is, and I'm not sure if you can assign the "blame" (if there is any) to one side.
I think as I said the workers have had a red hot run for quite a few years and it was those peaking conditions that drove the peak in their dissatisfaction. Conditions are going the other way now and people will try to hold their jobs a bit more I expect.
And what started the trend from people being lifetime company men to almost no loyalty? I doubt the ruling class one day got together and decided they'd stop treating workers well. It's surely a lot of factors on all sides. People have far more generational wealth including the investment in education, than in the early 1900s, and there are at least some social safety nets, so job loss might be considered less risky. It has become increasingly easier to advertise, search, apply, recruit for jobs outside the local region with telephone, fax, then internet, email.
I'm not sure what you'd prefer. Certainly people shouldn't be tied down to companies. Should corporations be made to keep people on long after they're costing more than they're producing? When you look at government and places with undue union power (police comes to mind), you get a lot of incompetence, corruption, and just poor organizations where crap floats to the top and they could never compete without enforced monopolies. Unfortunately it never turns places into egalitarian utopias.