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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

#271

Post by sizzle »

karaterobot wrote: post #174
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,…

I worked in a University lab during grad school, then worked in the private sector for 16 years, and have been back working on research software for the last four years. All I'll say is that the software world should not look at the research world for best practices on delivering software products, except maybe to do the exact opposite of what they do.

A lot of PI’s pull rank and crack the whip on post docs it’s super toxic and the hours are atrocious with weekends and expectation to work at night. I’ll take a tech middle manager over an arrogant PI every time.

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

#272

Post by [deleted] »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #270
dangus wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

[deleted]

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

#273

Post by srnayak »

In India, the Amazon managers are notorious for all bad practices e.g. forced PIP quota, hire to fire, demanding to work during off hours and on holidays. Now the concern is that these managers will go, join many companies and spread the same bad management practices across the industry.

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

#274

Post by dlgeek »

VincentEvans wrote: post #30

I am curious how do you just hire 14,000 managers at the cost of $3.5B yearly more than you needed? Maybe they should fire the guy responsible for THAT.

Realize they have over 1.5MM employees and who knows how many contractors.

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

#276

Post by kirso »

mancerayder wrote: post #266

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 op…

Don't take it too harshly, most of HN would build facebook in a weekend and exit for billions. And usually they only see their circle of influence without actually trying to be a manager in a first place to understand what does it take.

Their manager is now a business stakeholder, that is even worse...

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

#277

Post by BrandoElFollito »

I am a bad manager, which I warn new recruits about.

I need my team to be independent, make decisions and challenge my (brilliant) ideas. They simply need to be good with what they know, at their level.

I will actively evangelize my strategy (they can challenge it, ultimately I am the accountable), I will always have their back (because I am like this, there is no profound philosophy behind this) and when they did something successful, they did it and present in front of the board. When they fucked up, I fucked up.

This is not some kind of messianic approach - just generic mortality. I spend a lot of time with them and O like to have them as "work friends".

I would hate to be hit by suvh layoff, and I am rather happy with the fact that they would be pissed off as well.

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

#278

Post by mirekrusin »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #245
bb88 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listen to yourself. That's what management is supposed to do: manage people -- including other managers. You can't both accept and deny responsibility in the same breath. If you truly believe that, then this is cognitive dissonance in it's highest form.

There's what you imagine and what you can see with your own eyes in reality. Amazon, with its billions and hoards of smart people, still ended up in a situation where they find themselves in excess of 14,000 employees. It means that there's no simple formula and perhaps once in a while, orgs just need to clear the slate and see where the pain points are and build up once again.

Yes and the best people to ask who to trim are tech leads with track record of consistently delivering value.

Their field of view spans from little guys at the bottom of the chain, through the essence of working product up to at least two levels of management.

And they do have good judgement, if they didn't they wouldn't be able to consistently deliver value in the past.

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

#279

Post by joquarky »

Clubber wrote: post #161
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 had mostly bad managers. Most of them maybe wrote code for a year or two and think they understand team dynamics and how to build software. They then burden a good running team with whatever cult processes of the day is without taking any time to understand those team dynamics and which processes fit in those dynamics. It's like a coach that calls nothing but pass plays for a run centric team and makes the 180lb…

In my experience, most contemporary managers also think they know everything now because they can write genAI prompts without realizing the AI will tend to agree with whatever they put into it.

Micromanagement has gotten really horrible in the past few years. They hire SMEs then discard everything they suggest.

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

#280

Post by joquarky »

bb88 wrote: post #139
hnthrow90348765 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economic cards seemed more stacked against workers, so resentment for managers builds more quickly than the opposite direction. Management who resents their workers can also fire them. Workers who resent their managers must go find another job. And offshoring/nearshoring for workers happens more than managers. Would be interested in comparing the interview processes for ICs vs. managers at Amazon. Probably no lee…

A lot of women complained about the "boys only club" in the 70s/80s/90s. While things have gotten better for women, there is still a lot of "club" going on.

> "boys only club" in the 70s/80s/90s

> things have gotten better

If you read up on humanity, you'll likely find that it would be a bad idea to put money on any wager that this will end.

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