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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

#361

Post by DrScientist »

DrScientist wrote: post #344
kristov wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your sentiment, but the reason for the imbalance is risk. 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. With Amazon obviously the risk of that is low. But for many new companies the risk is very high. Therefore the payoffs are also high, to attract…

If being a founder/VC was truly more risky than being an employee - you'd see more homeless VC's and founders than employees, not just more millionaires - ie a spread either side. Sure sometimes founders and angel investors take big risks - however often the money invested is other people's money! So if you have a VC funded start up - the VC has persuaded other people to give them money they will invest on their beha…

Same argument applies to investors.

Isn't it the same as the house in roulette - sure each spin the house is taking risk - but if the game is structured so the odds are in your favour - you are taking less risk than the customer.

It comes down to who is setting the rules of the game.

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

#362

Post by bluGill »

taeric wrote: post #346
tayo42 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your talking about employment verification, no they don't say why. Just confirm dates of employment. If you get fired you can lie about it. No one can find out.

I confess this surprises me. I didn't think they had to give specific details, but I thought they had to at least confirm whose decision it was for the termination.

In most cases when a company wants to fire someone they will first pull them into an office and tell them they are allowed to submit their resignation right now. If this happens it is normally best for you to accept that offer as then they will say you left in good standing. At least this way you can find a new job.

There is the possible exception that you already have enough evidence that you were going to sue them anyway, then you can take that you were fired to your lawyer (you should already have a lawyer and gotten their advice on the situation). However I don't think this has ever been the case for anyone.

The other exception is when the police are there and will arrest you as part of firing you. I'm not aware of this happening, but it seems like it probably has at some point (like once per decade across all jobs in the world)

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

#363

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

cool_man_bob wrote: post #358
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…

> 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.

It’s already happening. The pay I am seeing offered now in second tier tech cities like Atlanta where I use to live are the same as they were in 2016 and haven’t kept up with inflation.

I’m having to continuously move up and closer to the “stakeholders”.

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

#364

Post by taeric »

bluGill wrote: post #362
taeric wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I confess this surprises me. I didn't think they had to give specific details, but I thought they had to at least confirm whose decision it was for the termination.

In most cases when a company wants to fire someone they will first pull them into an office and tell them they are allowed to submit their resignation right now. If this happens it is normally best for you to accept that offer as then they will say you left in good standing. At least this way you can find a new job. There is the possible exception that you already have enough evidence that you were going to sue them…

I'm fine with the idea that they won't share specifically that they fired someone for a specific reason. The surprising part, to me, is that they can't share if it was company's decision to end the relationship. My understanding was that if you just up and quit, then you don't qualify for unemployment benefits.

And I hasten to add that I'm fine being wrong on this point. Surprise can last a bit, though. :D

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

#365

Post by JCM9 »

tinyhouse wrote: post #336
JCM9 wrote: post #185

To be clear, it’s worse. Read the press release carefully: 1. 14k was the net change in “corporate headcount” which is PR puffery speak saying they’re firing a lot more but when you net out folks let go slotting into open roles elsewhere the net change today would be a 14k reduction 2. It also says that “looking ahead” “we expect to… find additional places we can remove layers, increase ownership, and realize efficie…

First, Andy led AWS to what it is today. Second, Amazon had a problem before Andy took over. Way too many managers and incompetent people in very senior levels. The fact that he's doing something about it is a good thing for Amazon. You don't become a CEO of a behemoth such as Amazon and expect to show impact within 6 months. It takes years. In terms of AI, they did invest in Anthropic early on and are a significant…

1. Lots of cracks showing in AWS before he took the big job, lack of focus, bloat of too many services with too few users

2. He then hired Adam to take over AWS which didn’t work out well

3. Good to see he’s cleaning things up, but we’re past the “clean things up” phase for a CEO. He’s been in role for a while now. That should have been the first few years of his tenure.

4. Anthropic was a good investment, but Amazon is just one of many investors. It’s nothing like the partnership that MSFT and OpenAI have, which was further strengthened with today’s announcements there. Amazon has nothing comparable to counter that.

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

#366

Post by pseudalopex »

nsxwolf wrote: post #201
pjc50 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we may be hitting an issue in translation between English and American; in British English "fired" implies "for cause", while a "blameless" process of headcount reduction is known as "redundancy". "Job losses" is a perfectly reasonable neutral phrase here. Indeed, under UK law and job contracts you generally cannot just chuck someone out of their job without either notice or cause or, for large companies, a s…

I think American English is the same colloquially. “I got fired” means I didn’t perform or did something wrong. “I got laid off” is our “I was made redundant”. “Fired” is also a technical term for both cases, in academic/economist speak.

Fired means terminated for any reason to many Americans. And academics, economists, and lawyers avoid it in my experience.

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

#367

Post by nradov »

taeric wrote: post #349
SoftTalker wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not in HR but as I understand it most companies will not say anything other than confirming dates of employment.

They won't confirm if the termination was the choice of the employee or the company? Doesn't that have implications for unemployment benefits?

Most employers won't confirm the reason for termination with random callers who are verifying employment history.

Unemployment insurance is a bit different. When a former employee files for unemployment benefits then the state will notify the last employer, and that employer can dispute the claim if the termination was for cause. In practice many employers don't dispute unemployment claims even for employees whom they terminated for performance reasons because it's not worth the hassle.

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

#368

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #299
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Yen Carry trade financed US VC since 1999, thanks to ZIRP from the BOJ.

Not Ironic at all that Dot Com immediately followed.

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

#369

Post by Esophagus4 »

BirAdam wrote: post #351
Esophagus4 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wouldn’t be surprised to see this at all.

And in a really dystopian world, the AI could review everyone’s PRs and documentation and rank engineers based on their contributions. It could even make compensation decisions based on that. Much of the performance management can be automated (with human in the loop).

Then you could have fewer managers managing more people (and get rid of a bunch of layers of management overhead). They could focus on the higher value parts of management like coordinating between teams, making tough execution decisions, resolving technical blockers / ambiguity, etc

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

#370

Post by gniv »

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.

They are neither. They eliminated 14k roles. Employees have 90 days to find new roles. It remains to be seen how many end up being fired.
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