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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

#261

Post by random3 »

bdangubic wrote: post #88
random3 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's the definition of an incompetent / mediocre manager. Most organizations expect their employees and managers in poarticular to be "breaking doors", which is the opposite attitude to blindly following any internal process.

this is same as saying soldiers in the military have the right to decide which orders they can disobey and which not

Almost - it's called "mission command" and the core idea is to prioritize initiative, flexibility, and independent judgment over strict adherence to orders’ exact wording.

https://www.army.mil/article/106872/understanding_mission_co...

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

#262

Post by random3 »

lovich wrote: post #83
random3 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's the definition of an incompetent / mediocre manager. Most organizations expect their employees and managers in poarticular to be "breaking doors", which is the opposite attitude to blindly following any internal process.

You have a very warped view of the world if you think most companies, or even Amazon in particular, are expecting their employees to be “breaking doors”. They are literally mandating people come in to sit in a room on video calls with people sitting in a room in other offices all around the country/world. That’s the most egregious one, but add up all the controls, pair it with layoffs and threats of more, and you’re…

You only need managers to the extent their actions can have an effect down the line. Otherwise they don't "manage" anything, hence they become communication brokers, potentially unnecessary. The reality is that in most cases that's the reality, but that doesn't make the reality the goal and, in fact, motivates these decisions.

I think Gervais captures these dynamics the best https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/

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

#263

Post by random3 »

ryandrake wrote: post #120
lovich wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a very warped view of the world if you think most companies, or even Amazon in particular, are expecting their employees to be “breaking doors”. They are literally mandating people come in to sit in a room on video calls with people sitting in a room in other offices all around the country/world. That’s the most egregious one, but add up all the controls, pair it with layoffs and threats of more, and you’re…

To be fair, OP was talking about the companies' expectations, not the behavior they are incentivizing. Many companies expect their employees to innovate, while implementing processes that prevent innovation. Many companies expect their employees to "take courageous risks" while punishing risk-taking that goes wrong. Many companies expect their employees to "act like they are owners" while giving them no equity or pro…

Exactly. It is about expectations, and it is about inbalance. Every employee expects ideal benefits with minimal work, every emplyer expects ideal work with mininal benefits. The reality is balance here is one of very many possibilities with leverage being most of the times one one side, rather than in the middle.

Complaining about the structure is like your sales complaining that your customers choose your competition's product - nobody cares.

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

#264

Post by nine_zeros »

vkou wrote: post #260
nine_zeros wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They aren't removing your boss, you still have one, except your new boss (who was your former skip level) will expect all the outputs that your previous boss produced. But you do realize that previously, you had to produce outputs for your boss and skip - but now, you only need to produce for skip? For 2 bosses, the hypothetical low/mid manager has to consider 2 bosses perspectives, 2 bosses politics, 2 bosses prom…

If your boss was any good at his job, he did most of the reporting and communication to keep the skip level happy. Either he wasn't, or you are just not aware of all the work he was doing. A good manager is a shit umbrella. Most of my managers have been good.

> If your boss was any good at his job, he did most of the reporting and communication to keep the skip level happy.

A big IF - and now the company has to hire more HR and more bosses to check on this boss. Create more bureaucracy around checking "if they are any good".

> did most of the reporting and communication to keep the skip level happy

And someone had to do reporting and communication to this boss in the first place. Thus, a boss requires someone/some people below them to spend time reporting to them, and themselves needs to spend time reporting above them to the skip.

From the big bosses perspective, this miniature boss's existence added more work to the company than required - thus, leading to the original post.

Just yanking layers to minimal required bosses is enough to reduce total work.

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

#265

Post by nomel »

snoman wrote: post #216
nomel wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can't really comprehend this, as someone involved with several layoffs (failing startup and corporate). Do you believe the layoffs are by lottery or something? If not lottery, who do you believe is selecting the individuals, and what's the criteria?

If these layoffs are any like I've been involved with, nobody is surprised by who stays. It's almost obvious. There are sometimes surprises by who lets go, usually having to do with the required headcount, where some better ones need to get let go too.

> In a layoff, with that many people

Absolute numbers are often used to appeal to emotion. It's less than 1%! Assuming 16% manager/non ratio, it's only 5% of management, so I suspect they aren't cutting too deep, or at all, into the high performing people.

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

#266

Post by mancerayder »

I'm an engineering manager (EDIT - not at Amazon or at a very large firm), and I do 10,000 bazillion things a day, usually involving fixing lousy project management, setting processes so random people on the team don't get slammed by random external demands, guiding people's careers, talking people off the ledge / therapy, matching people's skills and interests to the projects and work, creating other teams to run ops so engineers can engineer, talk to senior management in a way they need to hear to protect the people below from nonsense, proving to the people above that I need headcount (and then creating a hiring process), helping people below being new managers, helping junior people learn, and interacting with clients and business people so the engineers are protected from it.

Whenever I try to funnel some of these tasks to the senior engineers, almost all push back because it's not engineering.

But after reading this thread, I'm actually completely useless, and engineers should do better without me.

To that I laugh, and cry in frustration at the same time. Go at it.

As an engineer your new boss is a project manager from another org, senior group leaders from other groups, and generally the loudest yeller who's waiting on you. Have fun managing that.

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

#267

Post by dangus »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #238
dangus wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These numbers always seem huge but also don't forget that Amazon employs 1.5 million people. A 14,000 employee cut is less than one percent. Of course I know there are a lot of warehouse and delivery employees but they have managers, too.

It still is big. Let's not start to treat 10's of thousands of skill labor losing their jobs through no fault of their own as an everyday occurance. We may as well leave the US at that point.

It literally is an everyday occurrence. It is statistical fact. There are 340 million people in the USA. Tens of thousands of people lose and gain jobs every day. That is normal and not particularly unusual or cruel.

While the power dynamic of employment is uneven, if you wish for a company to never be able to let you go then you're also wishing for the hiring process to be far more difficult. If you wish for companies to have unreasonable processes involved in terminating employees, you're also wishing for extreme scrutiny in the hiring process rather than being able to get a job where employers take a chance on you.

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

#268

Post by johnnyanmac »

dangus wrote: post #267
johnnyanmac wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still is big. Let's not start to treat 10's of thousands of skill labor losing their jobs through no fault of their own as an everyday occurance. We may as well leave the US at that point.

It literally is an everyday occurrence. It is statistical fact. There are 340 million people in the USA. Tens of thousands of people lose and gain jobs every day. That is normal and not particularly unusual or cruel. While the power dynamic of employment is uneven, if you wish for a company to never be able to let you go then you're also wishing for the hiring process to be far more difficult. If you wish for compani…

Mass layoffs are not an everyday occurrence. It wasn't an occurance 2 years ago. Let alone decades ago. "person got fired" and "entire parta of an industry are laid off" are entirely different scales. It's like treating a wildfire incident with a person's single home burning down.

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

#269

Post by dangus »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #268
dangus wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It literally is an everyday occurrence. It is statistical fact. There are 340 million people in the USA. Tens of thousands of people lose and gain jobs every day. That is normal and not particularly unusual or cruel. While the power dynamic of employment is uneven, if you wish for a company to never be able to let you go then you're also wishing for the hiring process to be far more difficult. If you wish for compani…

Mass layoffs are not an everyday occurrence. It wasn't an occurance 2 years ago. Let alone decades ago. "person got fired" and "entire parta of an industry are laid off" are entirely different scales. It's like treating a wildfire incident with a person's single home burning down.

Literally an everyday occurrence. There are 33.2 million companies in the USA. Mass layoffs happen every day. But you know what else happens every day? Mass hiring.

There are literally fewer layoffs in tech now than 2 years ago. Go to the charts tab and scroll down to "Tech layoffs since COVID-19": https://layoffs.fyi/

There were over 4x the amount of tech layoffs 2 years ago according to this chart.

I understand the emotion behind your comments, as many people are frustrated with the economy in the US today. But your argument would be a lot stronger if you used factual, quantitative analysis.

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

#270

Post by johnnyanmac »

dangus wrote: post #269
johnnyanmac wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mass layoffs are not an everyday occurrence. It wasn't an occurance 2 years ago. Let alone decades ago. "person got fired" and "entire parta of an industry are laid off" are entirely different scales. It's like treating a wildfire incident with a person's single home burning down.

Literally an everyday occurrence. There are 33.2 million companies in the USA. Mass layoffs happen every day. But you know what else happens every day? Mass hiring. There are literally fewer layoffs in tech now than 2 years ago. Go to the charts tab and scroll down to "Tech layoffs since COVID-19": https://layoffs.fyi/ There were over 4x the amount of tech layoffs 2 years ago according to this chart. I understand the…

Well, you're clearly not interested in a goof faith discussion of we can't even align on what "mass firings are" l. I'm not here to just yell words at each other over nitpicks. You know what I meant when I said "over decades"

>There are literally fewer layoffs than 2 years ago.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/06/economy/us-jobs-report-februa...

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