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Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly

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Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly

#51

Post by rafaelmn »

cscheid wrote: post #41
bb88 wrote: post #24

I'm going to make the observation that politics in a company is caused by management. The more "politics" you have at a company, the more you pay in a "political tax". Effort which should benefit the company is delayed or made harder as employees have to bob and weave to get through the politics. I do believe if you want real culture change in a company, the best way to do it is to show managers the door, because tha…

(Context: I’m an IC and told my Manager multiple times that I’d quit if they ever make me a manager) If you truly believe that, please do yourself a favor and read “The tyranny of structurelessness” to understand what a managerless place becomes. everyone and no one becomes a manager, and there’s no explicit avenue of recourse. There’s a good reason management arises. We can discuss good management vs bad management,…

I read OP as change the management to change the culture, not remove it.

Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly

#52

Post by piecerough »

wkat4242 wrote: post #26

Haha a friend was just recommending I apply for a job there. I told her hell no. It's one of the worst in big tech. Probably second worst after twitter. The next one she came up with was Microsoft lol. I work with them a lot and I hate it. I work for an enterprise now but a pretty decent European one. I don't think I could work for a US big tech company.

What's a decent european enterprise?

Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly

#53

Post by Aurornis »

bb88 wrote: post #24

I'm going to make the observation that politics in a company is caused by management. The more "politics" you have at a company, the more you pay in a "political tax". Effort which should benefit the company is delayed or made harder as employees have to bob and weave to get through the politics. I do believe if you want real culture change in a company, the best way to do it is to show managers the door, because tha…

The most egregious office politics I've ever experienced came from the company that had a pathological aversion to managers.

They aimed for minimizing managerial positions to an extreme. The result was that a lot of ICs were playing hardball politics with nobody to keep them in check.

Really opened my eyes to the reality of office politics.

Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly

#54

Post by nomel »

wkat4242 wrote: post #26

Haha a friend was just recommending I apply for a job there. I told her hell no. It's one of the worst in big tech. Probably second worst after twitter. The next one she came up with was Microsoft lol. I work with them a lot and I hate it. I work for an enterprise now but a pretty decent European one. I don't think I could work for a US big tech company.

Expanding on this, even a little, would make your comment much more interesting.

Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly

#56

Post by LittleTimothy »

bb88 wrote: post #24

I'm going to make the observation that politics in a company is caused by management. The more "politics" you have at a company, the more you pay in a "political tax". Effort which should benefit the company is delayed or made harder as employees have to bob and weave to get through the politics. I do believe if you want real culture change in a company, the best way to do it is to show managers the door, because tha…

I think this is a simplistic take. In companies where there are clear management structures there are clear and obvious ways for managers to fuck around and play politics. When there aren't clear management chains, people with probably similar characteristics fuck around in different ways - it's just less obvious to some people.

Management is a tool used by people with their own motivations to acheive their goals. But a lack of management lets those same people acheive those same goals in different ways. Whether that's starting up duplicate projects and products, causing chaos and confusion by inserting themselves into topics that don't concern them, or simply picking fights. The same people get along in any organisation, the tool of management is just the easiest to spot from below.

Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly

#57

Post by Marazan »

analog31 wrote: post #32
bb88 wrote: post #24

I'm going to make the observation that politics in a company is caused by management. The more "politics" you have at a company, the more you pay in a "political tax". Effort which should benefit the company is delayed or made harder as employees have to bob and weave to get through the politics. I do believe if you want real culture change in a company, the best way to do it is to show managers the door, because tha…

Deming agreed with you: Quality control is a management problem. But there's management and there's management. If we're talking about 14000 people, they're not the top managers of the business, and getting rid of them won't change the culture. They're workers, and Deming also said: Don't blame the workers.

Middle management _is_ the culture of a company. A regular worker interacts not at all with the CxOs except reading their emails and every day with their managers.

Middle management is also the memory of the company.

Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly

#58

Post by nomel »

boredatoms wrote: post #3

They’ll just hire more managers again in 18months

Even if they do, they've culled those that they deemed weren't a good fit, possibly changing the hiring criteria. If the criteria for both is rational, purging can be very good for an org, and the employees. Crap managers make jobs suck for everyone involved.

edit: I'll say, I've only ever left a job because of a manager. Shortly before leaving my current job, due to a crap manager, the previous manager was fired. The entire org benefited.

Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly

#59

Post by dakial1 »

I tend to agree with Amazon leadership here, as they increase the management layer on a company, the team accountability and ownership gets lost. A more horizontal company is able to do more (per capita) and faster.

The tricky part is what to do when you scale, as you can't simply leave teams to their own devices as they will run their separate ways, so you do more and faster but in the wrong direction.

But then again, when you add management layer you start a chain reaction that creates this complex cake that might stop everything from happening.

It is a complex balance.

Re: Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly

#60

Post by [deleted] »

bb88 wrote: post #24

I'm going to make the observation that politics in a company is caused by management. The more "politics" you have at a company, the more you pay in a "political tax". Effort which should benefit the company is delayed or made harder as employees have to bob and weave to get through the politics. I do believe if you want real culture change in a company, the best way to do it is to show managers the door, because tha…

[deleted]
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