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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

#431

Post by insane_dreamer »

baggachipz wrote: post #113

I worked at AOL back when they did quarterly "staff reductions". They would go and hire lots of them right back; it was an accounting trick. Never mind the fact that families were affected and employees were constantly stressed near the end of every quarter. Those things don't matter, quarterly numbers do when growth has stalled.

> They would go and hire lots of them right back; it was an accounting trick.

How did it benefit the company's accounting? Doesn't it create an additional expense in both severance and hiring costs?

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

#432

Post by ericmay »

JustExAWS wrote: post #429
ericmay wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no red or blue cities or states. This is a made up fiction and we should stop using those terms because they are divisive and only serve to make the country weak. > Can you actually come up with a scenario where a few yokels in the south running around the field playing militia could overthrow the US government? No because that's a strawman. Though those yokels on January 6th sure gave it a try. > If today,…

There are very much two views of what America should be like and pretending there isn’t is why Democrats keep losing. 40% of Americans cheer how the current administration treats immigrants, non straight people, etc and continue defend the words of a racist podcaster. They wouldn’t want a “nuclear” bomb because it affects them. But there was no real fallout politically for the police MOVE bombing. If you don’t think…

> Those yokels on January 6th tried. But do you think they could have overcome even the local SWAT let alone the military?

Well they did - they weren't far away from grabbing Nancy Pelosi or Mike Pence. What's the US military going to do? It's not really equipped for this kind of stuff, oh and those yokels didn't really bring a ton of firearms, but they could have. Thankfully I don't think those yokels expected to have the success that they did and they didn't really intend to try and overthrow the government, though I personally believe they all should have been tried as many of them were.

> There are very much two views of what America should be like and pretending there isn’t is why Democrats keep losing.

The Democrats are losing because their ideas are by and large bad, and most Americans don't agree with them. Communism? Open Borders? Those are the topics that dominate the Democratic Party right now and as an independent I also find those ideas completely unpalatable, even though perhaps stupidly I still keep voting for Democrats locally because the MAGA goons make me so mad.

I'm not suggesting the country isn't divided - it always has been and it's perhaps more divided now because people are spending all day on the Internet, but further dividing the country be calling things "red" or "blue" is actively harmful. Besides even in those so called "red" or "blue" areas there are plenty of people who are on the other side of the dominating spectrum. Plenty of rural Californias who vote Republican, plenty of liberals in Kansas City.

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

#434

Post by JustExAWS »

ericmay wrote: post #432
JustExAWS wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are very much two views of what America should be like and pretending there isn’t is why Democrats keep losing. 40% of Americans cheer how the current administration treats immigrants, non straight people, etc and continue defend the words of a racist podcaster. They wouldn’t want a “nuclear” bomb because it affects them. But there was no real fallout politically for the police MOVE bombing. If you don’t think…

> Those yokels on January 6th tried. But do you think they could have overcome even the local SWAT let alone the military? Well they did - they weren't far away from grabbing Nancy Pelosi or Mike Pence. What's the US military going to do? It's not really equipped for this kind of stuff, oh and those yokels didn't really bring a ton of firearms, but they could have. Thankfully I don't think those yokels expected to ha…

No one is advocating for “communism” any more than Obama was a “secret Muslim trying to bring Sharia law into the US”. If you want to talk “socialism” that’s what you call tariffs that US citizens are paying and redistributing the taxes to farmers hurt by the tariffs.

Again do you think if the terrorist on Jan 6th had bern minorities there wouldn’t have been overwhelming force? Even if they did manage to get to Pelosi and Pence, they weren’t going to overthrow the entire government.

What could the military do? They had guns. They could shoot people. I’m well stew that red and blue is not statewide and there are more Republican voters in California than South Dakota.

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

#435

Post by ericmay »

JustExAWS wrote: post #434
ericmay wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those yokels on January 6th tried. But do you think they could have overcome even the local SWAT let alone the military? Well they did - they weren't far away from grabbing Nancy Pelosi or Mike Pence. What's the US military going to do? It's not really equipped for this kind of stuff, oh and those yokels didn't really bring a ton of firearms, but they could have. Thankfully I don't think those yokels expected to ha…

No one is advocating for “communism” any more than Obama was a “secret Muslim trying to bring Sharia law into the US”. If you want to talk “socialism” that’s what you call tariffs that US citizens are paying and redistributing the taxes to farmers hurt by the tariffs. Again do you think if the terrorist on Jan 6th had bern minorities there wouldn’t have been overwhelming force? Even if they did manage to get to Pelos…

> No one is advocating for “communism”

No, there are many progressives who are quite literally calling for communism or to implement economic policies we know are destructive. This is like you trying to tell me MAGA goons don't want a 3rd Trump term. Call a spade a spade.

> Again do you think if the terrorist on Jan 6th had bern minorities there wouldn’t have been overwhelming force? Even if they did manage to get to Pelosi and Pence, they weren’t going to overthrow the entire government.

Some of them were minorities by the way. In fact you can go look at polling and you'll see Trump outperformed his last win across minority groups.

But no, I don't think there would have been overwhelming force. There were/are too many J6 losers and they're not going to just gun them all down on TV. The military certainly wouldn't.

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

#436

Post by torginus »

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…

Which is what we're seeing right now - middle management, and vestigial organizations not related to the core dev team (Trust & Safety and co.) getting trimmed.

As for LLMs, I am perfectly capable of opening a notepad, taking notes, and converting them into Jira tickets (as I have done in the past) without bleeding edge machine learning models

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

#437

Post by cj »

tayo42 wrote: post #324
taeric wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most all will answer whether or not it was "with cause" if someone calls them up, though? Specifically because they have to if the caller is about unemployment, no?

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.

When employers do a reference check, the reference has a choice of:

1) Sticking to the legally safe answer of only confirming dates

OR

2) Confirm dates and share a few anecdotes about how the person was good to work with

If a previous employer chooses only to confirm dates, and refuses to answer any other questions, it's often a way of signaling something bad went down but you can't talk about it.

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

#438

Post by baggachipz »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #431
baggachipz wrote: post #113

I worked at AOL back when they did quarterly "staff reductions". They would go and hire lots of them right back; it was an accounting trick. Never mind the fact that families were affected and employees were constantly stressed near the end of every quarter. Those things don't matter, quarterly numbers do when growth has stalled.

> They would go and hire lots of them right back; it was an accounting trick. How did it benefit the company's accounting? Doesn't it create an additional expense in both severance and hiring costs?

Bearing in mind that I'm nothing resembling an accountant, I believe it has to do with getting them off the books by the end of the quarter before the statement goes out. That shows as less liability for the quarterly statement. The cost of severance and hiring is for the next quarter, so it doesn't affect the current quarter's numbers.

So:

- Company has 10 employees at an annual cost of 100k each. That's 250k (1mm / 4) of employee expenses for the quarter.

- Company lays off 5 employees right before the end of the quarter. That's only 5 employees on the payroll in the current quarter, because you account for the number of employees when the statement is issued. Re-hiring and severance payouts are going to be done sometime in the future.

Congratulations, your employee expense was only 125k for the quarter!

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

#439

Post by gruez »

stackskipton wrote: post #409
bluGill wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No, don’t resign instead of getting terminated. The reason they offer that is gets them off the hook for unemployment and makes any lawsuit harder. It’s 100% upside to company. No one is going to know you got fired, if they call the company, it’s just dates and title, probably say in good standing. It’s in old company best interest for you to get a new job because jobless people start talking to lawyers when they get…

>No, don’t resign instead of getting terminated. The reason they offer that is gets them off the hook for unemployment and makes any lawsuit harder. It’s 100% upside to company.

Depends on whether they're offering something, otherwise yeah it's worse for you unless you suspect they have evidence of you embezzling company funds or something.

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

#440

Post by gruez »

pseudalopex wrote: post #342
andsoitis wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Firing is when employer terminates someone for cause, i.e. employee did something wrong or didn't meet expectations. This meaning is present in many people's minds. It is not present in many people's minds or any dictionary I saw ever. to remove someone from their job, either because they have done something wrong or badly, or as a way of saving the cost of employing them[1] The act or an instance of dismissing som…

counterpoint:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fire#Verb

4. (transitive, employment) To terminate the employment contract of (an employee), especially for cause (such as misconduct, incompetence, or poor performance).

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