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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

#31

Post by philipallstar »

gjm11 wrote: post #15
code4life wrote: post #2

It really feels like we are in the middle of a recession.

"At the end of July, Amazon reported second quarter results which beat Wall Street expectations on several counts, including a 13% year over year increase in sales to $167.7bn (£125bn)." The stock-owning class is in a boom. The working class is in a recession. (People who have stock-market investments and need to work for a living are somewhere in between.) The average of one billionaire gaining £10M and a hundred mi…

A year on year increase in sales is real. It's not silly metrics like "net worth". Actual value is being exchanged.

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

#33

Post by orlp »

seydor wrote: post #21
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.

Is there a difference?

Passive voice deflects responsibility and agency.

Loss happens, firings are a decision.

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

#34

Post by softwaredoug »

reactordev wrote: post #9
code4life wrote: post #2

It really feels like we are in the middle of a recession.

Worse, we’ve been in one but have been pretending we aren’t. Stock goes up.

If not for the top 10 of the S&P 500 - the companies that can get a meeting at the white house - we'd probably be in a recession and S&P would be down.

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

#35

Post by klysm »

redwood wrote: post #25

This is a reflection of 1) compensation has come down since the ZIRP era at least in some roles and 2) it's a hirer's market. This means companies see an opportunity to bring compensation down. I wish employees would instead have an opportunity to sign up for lower salary. For whatever reason you just don't see that happening anywhere

Spreadsheet doesn’t like that option because number go down more with this option

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

#36

Post by actionfromafar »

maxehmookau wrote: post #7
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.

100%. Amazon hired 14,000 people, and now it's firing 14,000 people it no longer wants on its payroll. Plain and simple.

Nah, it gained 14,000 people, they kinda sneak in to the buildings and start doing work if you aren't serious about your perimeter security.

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

#37

Post by portaouflop »

seydor wrote: post #21
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.

Is there a difference?

It’s the same language used when taking about “car accidents”

They aren’t accidents, it’s an inherent part of how we designed cars and roads and we decided as society that we are ok with thousands of people killed by cars.

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

#38

Post by nemomarx »

bell-cot wrote: post #27
reactordev wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse, we’ve been in one but have been pretending we aren’t. Stock goes up.

The biggest "pretend" is where spokesmen, spin doctors, and sycophants for the plutocrat class have somehow convinced the 99% that stocks going up makes more jobs for the little people.

are stocks even going up outside of tech stocks that can benefit from AI investment? everything else seems stagnant

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

#39

Post by mynegation »

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…

This is a lot. If you are in a company large enough, you surely know at least 20 people and one of them is gone. The earlier floated figure was even larger: 30K

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

#40

Post by sbarre »

redwood wrote: post #25

This is a reflection of 1) compensation has come down since the ZIRP era at least in some roles and 2) it's a hirer's market. This means companies see an opportunity to bring compensation down. I wish employees would instead have an opportunity to sign up for lower salary. For whatever reason you just don't see that happening anywhere

I've taken pay cuts twice in my career, but both times it was at unfunded startups and it was more of a "we'll get you back for this later" (one did, one did not).

I worry that normalizing the idea that a company can make you an offer (that you can't refuse) of lower pay, with the alternative being that you get fired, would set some really bad precedents.

Companies would start to min/max this process and would use it as a way to meet targets (perhaps unrealistic ones) at the expense of take-home pay for employees, even in situations where they don't actually need to make cuts.

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