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Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

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

#351

Post by BirAdam »

Esophagus4 wrote: post #183
torginus wrote: post #152

My personal question is aren't managers in AWS technical people? Can't you offer them IC positions?

Google tried this and gave up, as it didn’t work out[1]. For now, there’s a lot of focus on automating software dev jobs, but I think companies are just starting to realize automation will thin the management layers as well. [1] https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.psu.edu/dist/3/50375/fil...

I think it might actually be easier to automate middle management than it would be technical folks. It's not exactly difficult to shove an AI agent into a meeting, have it record everything, and ask everyone for updates. Likewise, it isn't hard to have an AI agent just read through tickets and prompt people for updates. Dystopian? Yeah. Hard? No. Also, the AI would be better than most middle managers I've encountered. The sad thing is, I've also had a few excellent middle managers who helped me grow as a professional.

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

#352

Post by cromd »

heresie-dabord wrote: post #11
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.

From the CNN report [1]: --- Al won’t just effect change at Amazon, Jassy said. AI "will change how we all work and live," including "billions" of AI agents “across every company and in every imaginable field." However, much of this remains speculative. "Many of these agents have yet to be built, but make no mistake, they’re coming, and coming fast," Jassy said. --- [1] _ https://lite.cnn.com/2025/10/28/business/amaz…

Their addition of AI into Quicksight (their BI tool) really cemented for me how much they're willing to bluff to look relevant. They launched the AI addition at least a year ago, but recently rebranded the whole thing as "Quick Suite", promoting new AI capabilities. It really just seems like a new skin, with more purple. So far, out of 4 people at my org who tried it, all were disappointed after upgrading. I get much better results from sending a CSV to ChatGPT and asking for a graph.

It just doesn't seem to work out of the box. I test drove it on 20 BI questions, and for trivial questions, it gets about 50% right, and for more nuanced questions, it gets about 20% right. For example, I have a table like "people" with a column like "job_title" which has 10 possible values in an uneven distribution, and I asked "what fraction of people are nurses?". It gives me a pie chart where each slice wrongly gets 10%, because of the 10 possible values. Or if I asked what the mix by decade was, it would just show a flat line, 10% each period.

Then you have the more tricky questions, like "show me the revenue for each of the top 3 products in each quarter". It calculates an all-time top 3 first, and then shows the same products each quarter, instead of redoing it within each quarter. Reasonable enough, but when you try to correct it, it just gets stuck, possibly with an even worse answer, and there's no way out of the loop.

Why would they let executives touch something so half-baked?

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

#353

Post by darrenf »

ghaff wrote: post #312
cjrp wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Made redundant" is another term for the latter.

Which, at least in American English, comes across like corporate jargon/weasel words. Lost their job is literally true and would probably take a bunch more words to describe the precise reasons.

Both things can be literally true. I've lost my job by being made redundant, twice. In Britain redundancy is a very specific thing, where your role no longer exists and you must be let go in a fair way according to employment law. It's quite the opposite of jargon or weasel words here: https://www.gov.uk/redundancy-your-rights

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

#354

Post by thegrimmest »

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…

This is called "consensual exchange" and it is by far the most ethical way to run society. You don't have to agree to these terms. You can go start your own company. It's a free country. The alternative always seems to boil down to various bureaucrats dictating terms to people. What gives them the right to do so?

You're no more entitled to be paid a salary than you are to get laid. Both satisfy needs that you undeniably have, but must be negotiated with other people on a strictly consensual basis.

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

#355

Post by cjbgkagh »

andsoitis wrote: post #177
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.

> These aren't "job losses", these are "firings". While both terms mean someone no longer has a job, they differ in cause and implication. Firing is when employer terminates someone for cause, i.e. employee did something wrong or didn't meet expectations. Job loss is a broader term, simply means the person no longer has a job, for any reason, but typically layoffs, downsizing, restructuring, plant closure, or being f…

That’s what I was thinking but I looked it up in the dictionary and appears that firing is already pretty neutral yet picked up the negative connotation, presumably because most people consider firings to be with cause. Even ‘layoffs’ has picked up a negative connotation. I’m not sure if it’s possible for language to to continuously outrun the associations, I guess we either police the language more fervently or continue inventing new words.

Part of me hates the capriciousness of randomly selected layoffs but it’s done for a few main reasons, firstly that it’s not exploitable by internal politicking (at least less explicable). Secondly, reduces exposure to lawsuits about performance. Thirdly, reduces reputational damage to those laid off. Of course there is an incredible incentive to lie about the randomness.

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

#356

Post by pseudalopex »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #233
dgs_sgd wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is downsizing and an employee’s role no longer being cost effective for the business not considered “cause” for firing?

In the US, if your employment is terminated for cause, i.e. due to your underperformance at work, then you are not eligible to receive unemployment benefits from the government. There could be other conditions too depending on whatever employment agreement exists, but the point is to determine if an employee’s lack of performance caused their employment to be terminated or something external to the employee caused th…

> In the US, if your employment is terminated for cause, i.e. due to your underperformance at work, then you are not eligible to receive unemployment benefits from the government.

You meant i.e. or e.g.?

Under performance may be considered termination for cause in your state. It is not generally.

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

#357

Post by JCM9 »

malfist wrote: post #322
blenderob wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there were huge misses on areas like AI Honest question. What could they have possibly gained from AI? What did they miss out on by not getting into AI?

What if I told you that Amazon has spent more money on AI this year than any other company? On track to spend nearly 150B by the end of the year?

I’d say leadership should be fired for having so little to show for it

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

#358

Post by cool_man_bob »

JustExAWS wrote: post #287
pjc50 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As an employee you don't have financial risk tied to the company, you get a regular paycheck. But if you are an investor you take a risk that the money you invest can one day just vanish with zero return. I would like people who cannot distinguish between an income stream and a capital value to learn what an "annuity" is. Employees have very significant financial risk tied to the company because it's their main sou…

I have been an employee for 30 years across 10 jobs - one of which was Amazon from 2020-2023. I never once considered my “main source of income” my current job. My main source of income was my ability to get a job. I always stayed ready to look for a job at a moments notice and it has never taken me more than a month to get a job when I was looking. In fact, ten days after getting my “take severance package and leave…

> Whether you are an enterprise developer or BigTech in the US you are on average making twice the median income in your area. There is usually no reason for you not to be stacking cash.

For now, expect that to be clawed back severely over the next few years.

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

#359

Post by JustExAWS »

jplusequalt wrote: post #341
JustExAWS wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been an employee for 30 years across 10 jobs - one of which was Amazon from 2020-2023. I never once considered my “main source of income” my current job. My main source of income was my ability to get a job. I always stayed ready to look for a job at a moments notice and it has never taken me more than a month to get a job when I was looking. In fact, ten days after getting my “take severance package and leave…

>I never once considered my “main source of income” my current job. My main source of income was my ability to get a job. Your "ability to get a job" is not what put money into your bank account twice a month. Your employer did.

Yes and when my employers - including Amazon - decided they wanted to stop putting money into my account, I didn’t stress.

I told my wife as soon as I had the meeting with my manager at Amazon back in 2023 about my “take $40K severance and leave immediately or try (and fail) to work through the PIP”. She asked me what were going to do? I said I’m going to take the $40K and we are going to the US Tennis Open as planned in three weeks. I called an old manager who didn’t have a job for me. But he threw a contract my way for a quick AWS implementation while I was still interviewing.

I doubt very seriously if my job fell out from under me tomorrow, someone wouldn’t at least offer me a short term contract quickly.

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

#360

Post by BirAdam »

josefritzishere wrote: post #235

The unemployment rate in the US is climbing. If you look at a 5-year curve, it looks like nothing. But if you look at a 3-year window it's devastating. Seeing the highs of 2003 and 2009 it seems likely that it will continue to climb. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE

If you'd like to be really upset, check the labor participation rate.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART

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