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Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

bbc.com

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Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#291

Post by bluGill »

reassess_blind wrote: post #196
phoe-krk wrote: post #4

These aren't "job losses", these are "firings". They aren't unfortunate accidents of external origin that happened to them, they are conscious internal decisions to let people go.

Companies have no incentive to employ as many people as possible. Really it’s the opposite, make as much money as possible, while paying as few employees as possible.

That is the incentive to employee more people - they can do more with those people. There is a balance between the two though. More people means less focus.

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#292

Post by fnordpiglet »

stoneman24 wrote: post #18

From the article, Amazon has 1.5 million employees across offices and warehouses. With about 350,000 corporate employees in executive, managerial and sales. So that’s about 4% of the non-warehouse staff. What’s their normal staff turnover rate per year? I wonder if it’s another staff reduction (cos we over hired and want to remove people who didn’t impress) under the cover of improving business productivity using AI…

It’s actually not warehouses. It’s groceries. Amazon jumped from a few hundred thousand to 1mm+ with the acquisition of Whole Foods. The corporate jobs is inclusive of engineering and aws.

They do an annual “top grading” layoff that’s variable in size from 5% to 10% which are performance based. There is obviously attrition as well. This leads to a constant hiring flow as these are typically backfilled.

These layoffs are often in addition to top grading and are not backfilled.

Note this is also on top of the RTO misery and thumb screw attrition drive to force out top performing talent in an inverse top grade maneuver.

Almost every single person I had an ounce of respect for at Amazon has left over the last few years. I find it hard to understand why anyone would work there any more.

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#293

Post by nbaugh1 »

softwaredoug wrote: post #104
actionfromafar wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost like a merger of Capital and State.

You might say its rather socialist...

Just missing the social programs that redistribute the wealth to the working class

The system/ideology you're looking for starts with an "F" and ends with "ascism"

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#294

Post by ericmay »

danaris wrote: post #269
ericmay wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US kind of does in that at least in spirit if the government violates the constitution we have this 2nd Amendment and plenty of moral precedent from the founders. It’s in the Declaration of Independence too which, in my view, is just the first page of the Constitution. The 0th Amendment if you will. Related to your second point about autocracy - I mean the good thing is you can, today, go start a company with the…

> if the government violates the constitution we have this 2nd Amendment and plenty of moral precedent from the founders. Yeah? How's that working out right now, when the government is unquestionably violating the Constitution left and right?

Well you still need the people to actually believe the Constitution is being violated or that it’s not something that can be corrected.

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#295

Post by stego-tech »

UncleMeat wrote: post #142
joshuacc wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“firing people while turning a profit is 100% bad faith that should be regulated or barred.” That’s far too broad a claim. Just because you’re turning a profit doesn’t mean you should be locked into keeping all of your employees. Some are likely to be underperformers who don’t bring sufficient ROI compared to other investments/hires you could make.

My experience with these sorts of layoffs is that they are not tightly bound to performance. If you have underperformers you can fire them the ordinary way.

Literally this. Corporations are good at making up plausible excuses, but anyone who takes more than two seconds to evaluate their claims beyond face value will find they’re almost always complete bullshit.

Underperformers should be rotated out long before a mass layoff occurs. If your company isn’t axing them until a mass layoff, they’re doing bad business.

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#296

Post by BadCookie »

YcYc10 wrote: post #181
lexszero_ wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Letting go" belongs in the same HR phrasebook. They didn't ask permission to quit and the company were so generous to let them, the initiative was from the other side.

Yeah a classic euphemism.

It’s better than “RIFed,” at least.

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#297

Post by otikik »

phoe-krk wrote: post #4

These aren't "job losses", these are "firings". They aren't unfortunate accidents of external origin that happened to them, they are conscious internal decisions to let people go.

Jeffrey Bezos: All those jobs will be lost. Like tears in the rain.

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#298

Post by reassess_blind »

martin-t wrote: post #44
phoe-krk wrote: post #4

These aren't "job losses", these are "firings". They aren't unfortunate accidents of external origin that happened to them, they are conscious internal decisions to let people go.

It's wild that you can legally work for a company, spend your limited life's time to build a part of it while not owning even a tiny bit of it (getting paid for unit of time - a finite resource) and then just get fired once you are not longer useful and that's the end of your income from the thing you built for you. All the while people who own it don't have to perform any kind of work and keep getting paid in perpet…

Correct, owning the business will almost always be a better financial deal than working for the business.

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#299

Post by lotsofpulp »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #267
marcusb wrote: post #12

Once a company moves on to recurring, large-scale layoffs justified by vague corporate Mumbo-Jumbo, I think it is safe to assume it is a "day 2" company.

Don't worry, when ZIRP returns, they'll be a day 1 company again. People mistook ZIRP for genius for 25 years.

This is a little exaggerated, considering ZIRP was 2009 to 2022, 13 years, and came well after Amazon had established its trajectory.

And they did kind of successfully roll out a global logistics network, at a time when no one thought anyone could compete with Walmart. And they became leaders in the cloud computing space.

These aren't trivial accomplishments solely enabled by ZIRP.

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#300

Post by christina97 »

tirant wrote: post #133
nemomarx wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not catastrophic, but probably a sign that jobs are shrinking instead of growing and so good market information if you were thinking about getting promoted or moving around?

Numbers do not support that. Jobs might be shrinking within Amazon, but globally the situation is the opposite. Population is still growing, 25% the last 20 years (trend that is slowly reversing), and unemployment rates are the lowest at global scale (~4,9% for 2024, lowest historically, down from 6.0% in 2005). That's around ~1.0 billion more jobs in 2024 compared to 2005. [1] https://www.ilo.org/resource/news/ilo-e…

It makes no sense to look at global averages for the employment market.
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