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Amazon cuts 16k jobs

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#531

Post by mips_avatar »

hintymad wrote: post #411
focusgroup0 wrote: post #37

>Amazon axes 16,000 American jobs as it ... relocates to a larger campus in India https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/10/amazon-to-invest-additiona...

People may have forgotten what happened back in early 2000s. Outsourcing was all the rage, and people in the US were really concerned. And then it came the explosive growth of internet, of mobile, of cloud, of social network, and etc. And then discussion died or at least dwindled enough that we stopped paying attention. It looks to me that massive outsource means that companies turn to focus on incremental improvemen…

Outsourcing in the 90's/2000's failed because you didn't want to deskill engineers and reduce their scope, you wanted Jeff Dean building pagerank and building Google.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#532

Post by otikik »

watwut wrote: post #450
GrinningFool wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it doesn't change that Bill was the person who was responsible, and now is gone. So what exactly are they supposed to say? In the context of the GP's post, that seems to be the point - there is no longer anybody there who is responsible for X anymore.

> So what exactly are they supposed to say? Several options, pretty much all of them involve being actually cooperative rather then intentionally unhelpful. If Bill was part of some other team, point to that team or its leader. If he was in your team, you or leader can ask about what the person wants and move from there. Maybe you can actually answer the question. Maybe the proper reaction involves raising jira ticke…

You assume too much.

I have seen it many times that when Bill leaves, the thing he was responsible for doesn't get picked up by anyone.

It doesn't necessarily even mean that the organization is "abnormal". Perhaps the reason Bill was let go was because X was not considered business-critical any more.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#533

Post by themafia »

rich_sasha wrote: post #68
paxys wrote: post #4

Every large company is updating its standard layoffs announcement press release from "economic headwinds" to "AI".

Excuse is only half the story. I don't fully understand why they are doing it though. Companies hire people to make money, not as an act of social conformance. Global economy doesn't look that terrible. Nor is the AI story that believable. Is it just the CEO Zeitgeist? All the guys at Aspen talking about what fraction they cut, just as 5 years ago they bragged how bloated their org chart is? TBH the "ZIRP overhiring"…

The value of money halved in the past 5 years.

Salaries did not double in that same time.

That's why they're doing this. They can. Laissez-faire is the current regime of capitalism we live in.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#534

Post by kg »

allknowingfrog wrote: post #498
andai wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it looks to me like the best time to be a business owner, and the worst time to be employed.

Americans pay a pretty hefty health insurance penalty when they leave steady employment to start their own business. There have definitely been better times to be an entrepreneur in this country.

Finding investment is harder than usual in this current economic climate, too. At least in some industries like mine.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#535

Post by simianparrot »

retinaros wrote: post #506
Aurornis wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He told me that he had worked to develop a tool that would replace effectively all of the middle management function that he was responsible for: gathering information from folks below him, distilling it down and reporting that to people above him. Any manager whose job was this simple was on borrowed time anyway. I think the person was feeding you a story around the campfire to impress you. Real management work do…

lol. it does. its a good description of about 90% of the mgrs

Seems like Amazon is doing the right thing cutting down its corporate workforce then.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#536

Post by shimman »

khazhoux wrote: post #256
paganel wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly looks like AI slop, so I stopped reading pretty fast.

It’s pretty sad that when people write well now, others dismiss it as AI.

The author literally admits to using AI in the preceding comments...

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#537

Post by pc86 »

KerrAvon wrote: post #328
echelon wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't we all want H1B rather than offshoring? That keeps the facilities here, the local employment options here, the growth here, the tax base here... We should want more smart people moving to this country. More business creation, more capital, more labor, more output. Immigration is total economic growth for America, non zero-sum. Offshoring is not only economic loss, but second order loss: we lose the capacity…

We should want open borders. Immigration is a significant net positive. But we can settle for controlled immigration with liberal limits. H1-B is stupid on its face. You're seriously telling me that this software engineering job absolutely cannot be filled by an American? That doesn't pass the laugh test.

You say "we should want open borders" then argue for something that is objectively not open borders. "Open borders" and "controlled immigration" are diametrically opposed things, regardless of whatever liberal limits you're imagining. Almost nobody is arguing for zero immigration.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#538

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

aoeusnth1 wrote: post #41
glimshe wrote: post #27

I've been hearing about massive Amazon layoffs for a few years now. How come the company still exists? Are these layoffs followed by hiring at cheaper regions or different parts of the company? From my perspective as an occasional Amazon customer, things are pretty much unchanged.

Amazon has 350K corporate roles, so yearly layoffs of 16K is only 5% - if you assume some modest re-hiring in lower-cost locations, this is just a relatively standard (at least lately) pivot out of high-cost US roles into other lower-cost economies.

Yea I had to Google their total headcount when I saw the headline since the number does sound high, but in reality is only 5%.

When you factor in low performers and how most people here would view middle management in any other topic thread, it's not that insane. If in a pool of 20 workers around you, you can't find 1 worker you don't think is a step below the others, your hiring pipeline is better than most.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#539

Post by reliabilityguy »

paxys wrote: post #56
glimshe wrote: post #27

I've been hearing about massive Amazon layoffs for a few years now. How come the company still exists? Are these layoffs followed by hiring at cheaper regions or different parts of the company? From my perspective as an occasional Amazon customer, things are pretty much unchanged.

The simple answer is that they hire more than they fire. In a lot of cases they will fill a role immediately after they fire the last person who was in it. Average employee retention at companies like Amazon (both voluntary and forced) is ridiculously low - something like 1.5 years. PIPs, forced burnout, mass layoffs etc. are all part of the corporate strategy. The revolving door helps keep costs low because employee…

> The revolving door helps keep costs low because employees leave before the bulk of their stock grants have vested.

I am not sure it applies to Amazon though. Amazon in the first year pays bonus in cash to compensate for 5% of the RSUs vesting. So, they actually loosing cash if people are let go after a year.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#540

Post by pc86 »

jandrese wrote: post #340
KerrAvon wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should want open borders. Immigration is a significant net positive. But we can settle for controlled immigration with liberal limits. H1-B is stupid on its face. You're seriously telling me that this software engineering job absolutely cannot be filled by an American? That doesn't pass the laugh test.

> H1-B is stupid on its face. You're seriously telling me that this software engineering job absolutely cannot be filled by an American? That doesn't pass the laugh test. The job description is a senior full stack product developer fluent in all programming languages and frameworks. Salary is $70,000/year. Somehow they can never find Americans to fill those jobs. They'll go on Linkedin complaining that Americans are…

Link the job description because I don't believe this is real.
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