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Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

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Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#311

Post by qqtt »

sparrc wrote: post #259
gnicholas wrote: post #175

> 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…

At Amazon practically everything that’s not AWS falls under “retail”. Including things like prime video and alexa.

That kind of depends on what exactly you are talking about. From a financial statement perspective, Amazon chooses to only disclose revenue from AWS separately from the rest of the business. That's more to do with reporting regulations regarding what needs to be reported once those earnings reach a certain threshold of the entire business - which AWS passed (previously to this threshold being reached, they did not even separate AWS in their earnings reports).

Internally, Amazon structures their teams into divisions. There is a retail division, and part of that division works on Alexa (mainly, the shopping skills and shopping experience, trying to make shopping on Amazon with Alexa as easy as possible) - but the main Alexa organization is not under "retail" at Amazon, which includes the actual device development, hardware teams, ML related to voice processing, etc. Same story with Prime Video.

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#312

Post by gnarbarian »

blood for the blood god.

It's not good for the soul to work for somebody who doesn't appreciate your contributions.

The Amazon refugees with talent and ability will find work, hopefully with places that will cherish them. Those without talent and ability can use this kick in the pants as a wake up call to sort their shit out.

I am also looking for a new job. competition makes me thrive and I welcome the challenge to compete with the best. I'll see you on the battlefield

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#314

Post by webo »

ferdowsi wrote: post #219
mahidol wrote: post #205

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?

US doesn’t give out a permanent residency based on how long you lived in the country. There’s only a few common paths to immigration: employment sponsored (2-20 years), marriage based (1-3 years), other family based (2-20 years), investor based (1-3 years). Student or tourist years don’t matter.

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#315

Post by kubectl_h »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #295
jdminhbg wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I totally agree. The whisper quiet vans driving safely and unhurriedly up and down the street where my kids play are a much better solution. I hope that your plans to legislate the status quo into permanence are successful.

I may have a stale understanding of the laws regarding drones in the U.S. But my understanding is they can basically hover around / over your property without your consent. That's very different from vans driving on public roads and (when I've ordered something) parking in my driveway.

Working from home since the start of the pandemic I hear delivery trucks honking on reverse and backing into my driveway (granted I'm at the end of a cul-de-sac but I'm in a pretty remote area) 3-4 times a day. I also see trucks backing into empty driveways to stage unloading, as well as trucks convening in the cul-de-sac to do package transfers.

I don't mind these things, but they do utilize my property and impact my little neighborhood. I'm not convinced some buzzing above is worse. How much do we own the air above us? Is that somehow not public?

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#316

Post by weatherlite »

VincentEvans wrote: post #36

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…

> but it hasn’t hit Amazon pocketbook now, has it? Are they in danger of running out of money?

Stock price crashed. This effects the bonuses/equity of a bunch of employees, some of whom are on the executive levels. Cutting on employment is a very effective method to raise profits and help the stock price. It sucks but that's what the market (investors) like. This is just capitalism ...we've all signed up for this (I guess?).

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#317

Post by midoridensha »

8note wrote: post #93
asdff wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can a company be more profitable with less workers if the workers are the source of the profits?

The workers aren't the source of profits in all cases. Eg, a musician is a worker, but once they've written a song that you now iwn, you can sell infinite licenses to it, regardless of whether the musician is still being paid

This is why, these days, musicians all make their money by touring. People will pay over and over to see the same person play the same song in person.

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#318

Post by 10hr »

zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #309
GenerocUsername wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There would be a lot fewer recruiters, and more experienced engineers. Also a less monolithic tech culture. Right now every employee is more or less compatible across every company because we all seek to be transferable

You would think so but too many people get really comfortable and never expand their skills beyond the minimum required to do their current job. Last year I had an SRE position open I had to interview over three dozen people before I found one guy who could explain anything he had done in any detail. Everybody else was probably in the room when someone else did something, but could not give details of what was done,…

You've been reiterating this across a few threads this month, right?

Perhaps it IS the widespread case that a lot of us are getting paid as SRE for much less than you believe an SRE should know. Ultimately, where you've set the bar is arbitrary

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#319

Post by operatingthetan »

bushbaba wrote: post #68
jjcon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the tech companies are letting a mix of recent hires, corporate middle management and in amazon’s case some logistics warehouse workers and specialty project engineers were let go. It’s a pretty eclectic, diverse group of people so its not as hard as it sounds to reabsorb into other companies. If they were all engineers or all HR there might be issues but in an already over-employed economy already 17k jobs w…

I disagree there’s simply not enough FANG level high paying jobs to fill all these employees into. Many will end up at startups and other industries with a paycut. Few companies are willing to pay a HR or Recruiter 300k/year comp.

>Few companies are willing to pay a HR or Recruiter 300k/year comp.

Amazon wasn't doing that.

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#320

Post by lapcat »

qqtt wrote: post #300
htag wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they still have a P&L like any other company Amazon's quarterly reports have all been good so far (Q3 2022 is the latest). Sales are up 15% YoY, and they are profitable.

Simple growth does not indicate that Amazon's quarterly reports are "all good" - Amazon like all other companies are valued based on their future earning potential. Amazon in particular has given very soft revenue and growth guidance compared to what they were earlier expecting, hence, they are one of the worst performing tech stocks right now. In absolute terms, both Amazon and Apple are first place for evaporating…

> In absolute terms, both Amazon and Apple are first place for evaporating 800 billion dollars in market cap EACH over the last year.

In relative terms, Apple is in first place for the largest market cap in the world of any company, and Amazon is in fifth place.

They're totally fine.

Think of it this way: Amazon is still more than twice as valuable now as it was 5 years ago. Short-term investors will live by the sword or die by the sword, but long-term investors are fine.

The main problem is that everyone went nutty during the pandemic. The pandemic valuations were nutty, and the pandemic hiring was nutty. You could call it "irrational exuberance". Now they're coming back to reality.

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