Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division • Hacker News Board

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

#531

Post by _DeadFred_ » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 5:57 PM UTC

Jensson wrote: post #479

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The owner of the employer company just experienced a vacation in space, renting an entire European country for a wedding, etc. Some employees are going to experience losing their housing. Losing their health benefits while sick. Children will be moved from their friends/schools. Some will lose their careers as they won't find new related work quick enough and will have to take whatever they can get for their next job…

Those are unrelated, the same would happen regardless if it was owned by millions via their pension plans or a few billionaires, both are equally greedy and immediately move their investments for 1% higher returns, the CEO's at these companies are servants to that inhuman level of greed that comes from dissociated masses of people being owners.

Funny, every company prior to around 2010 the owners felt the pain of the employees and were seen as at least partially human. Sure post 2010 an anti-societal cohesion element of 'maximum extraction now' has taken over the ownership and political classes trying to speedrun societal breakdown/collapse, but that was not the norm or acceptable (you would have even be ostracized from the ownership/capital class) for all of my life prior to 2010.

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

#532

Post by senderista » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 9:09 PM UTC

tayo42 wrote: post #485

senderista wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't mean the hiring manager can't go through informal backchannels to find out.

Ehh I got fired once, the new hiring manager would have to know the manager I reported to be able to find out. I actually had a different manager at the same company ask me if I was interested in coming back becasue he didn't know a different manager fired me. You need to be memorable enough too. Backchanel is not really a real concern unless you did something really fucked up. Otherwise who do you think knows?

It depends. If you're in a niche industry/specialization then people might know each other.

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

#533

Post by RiverStone » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 9:31 PM UTC

BirAdam wrote: post #360

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

The decrease is likely just the result of the demographic shift caused by an aging population, as the notes say. Unrelated to the overall health of the economy.

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

#534

Post by JustExAWS » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 5:41 AM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #521

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’m no special snowflake. I keep my resume updated, my network strong, skills in sync with the market, 9-12 months in savings in the bank. This is extremely unusual in general, not at all typical. Here, on Hacker News, we have an unusually high proportion of high earners, and I'd guess a lot of FIRE people like me (and I infer, you), but the median US person has $8k, about 3 months, of savings: https://www.fool.com…

As a former Amazon employee who lurked in the “anonymous” internal #pay-equity and the #pay-equity-discussion Slack channels, I can tell you that the typical return offer for an L4 who was a former intern was around $150K - $165K cash and stock and the average L5 was around $230K - $260K+ cash and stock per year (check my numbers on levels.fyi I might be off that was a couple of years ago).

But I have that amount in liquid cash because I’m an empty nest boomer with my wife who had a house built in 2016 in the burbs of Atlanta that I sold for twice the amount I paid for it in 2024 and downsized to a condo in Florida.

Before 2020, my only security was my ability to get a job fast.

But honestly anyone who expected loyalty from Amazon was like the old woman who took care of the snake. They should have been saving.

And I’m not at all FIRE, I’ll be realistically working until 65. Don’t cry for me. I work remotely and my wife and I travel all of the time including doing the digital nomad thing off an on where we are gone for months at a time.

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

#535

Post by LFchv » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 4:26 PM UTC

TallGuyShort wrote: post #282

From: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-workfor... > we want to operate like the world’s largest startup This is a phrase I hear repeated by leadership a lot, and it's usually code for "why doesn't everyone else just make the business grow faster?" It is almost always, as in this case, followed by statements that suggest they don't understand what is actually different about the way a start up func…

Sounds like some marketer got tasked into trying to convince a group of people that the company is looking at aggressive growth and unrealized markets for as long as they are willing to entertain that delusion.

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

#536

Post by rhubarbtree » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 5:07 PM UTC

gniv wrote: post #374

dangus wrote: post #110

Q3 results [PDF]: https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/2025/q2/... Numbers are all in the black and up year over year and compared to previous quarter. Double digit revenue growth in both retail and AWS. Often I wonder whether corporate leaders took any kind of logic class in college or if they just have a fetish for harming people for no reason. Either that or whatever business school they went to bel…

That's Q2. Q3 will be announced day after tomorrow. This announcement might mean they are not doing that well (compared to expectations).

Wouldn’t it make sense to announce at the same time or afterwards, so that employees can see the problem?

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

#537

Post by FeloniousHam » Tue, Nov 04, 2025, 1:47 PM UTC

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #530

FeloniousHam wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And said greed (by both founder and shareholders) produced a company that so enriched them BY BEING FAVORED BY BILLIONS(!) of customers worldwide to provide access to range goods with a convenience, price, and speed experienced only by the wealthy just a few years earlier :). Ugh, Capitalism.

Yes the wealthy, famous for their love of cheap 'from China to the landfill' goods and life risking fake fuses, counterfeit Calvin Klein underwear, and supplements spiked with hidden drugs or that are just plain toxic. Ugh capitalism is right. https://www.cspi.org/article/fda-alert-supplements-amazon-po... https://www.consumerreports.org/health/fda-finds-hidden-drug... https://kagi.com/search?q=amazon+fake+fuses

I am confuse. I don't know how much Amazon cares about what's sold on their site (probably more than eBay?), but they have most liberal return policy on the internet, and from the one seller I've personally met, they're hard on vendors.

Bad products and services exists in all markets, choice is the cure.

Is it Amazon branded products your upset with? I guess don't buy them? I genuinely do not understand your argument.