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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

#61
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…

Totally. You'll get the Lord of the Flies scenario.

Even with with a manager, if the manager isn't doing much managing then the flies will start buzzing.

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

#63
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 do believe if you want real culture change in a company, the best way to do it is to show managers the door, because that's how you got there in the first place.

Which managers? The CEO, CxOs, and VPs are the place to start.

If you want to change the culture of a place - business, family, community - start by changing yourself.

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

#64

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.

I have had a long career working for F50 companies across a few decades. I can tell you, my time as a senior manager at Microsoft in mid 00’s has been the most pleasant experience I have had working in the private sector. A lot has changed in the past 20 years, but I am in touch with many colleagues still working there, and we still recommend Microsoft over the rest.

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

#65
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…

Figuring out "bad management" is really a hard problem. The same problem exists in the government bureaucracies too.

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

#66
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…

Systems learn by removing parts, via negativa. -Taleb

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

#67
post #16

Amazon (the online retailer nowadays mostly hawking Chinese alphabet-salad-named brands) and/or AWS the cloud service behemoth? I continue to find it so bizarre that they are the same company.

The yellow|white|red jacks on the back of your TV are "RCA jacks." RCA stands for Radio Corporation of America. The same RCA launched NBC, which launched CNBC, which is a dominant source of financial news in the US.

You plugged your Nintendo into a TV using jacks designed by the same company that told your parents which stocks to buy and sell.

Gets even weirder when you get into acquisitions, where Ben and Jerry's ice cream is owned by the same Unilever that is famous for its soap.

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

#68
post #59

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 agai…

[deleted]

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

#69

This is old news and refers to the 15% figure that was announced last year (more than 6 months ago!) and for which the "layoffs" are already completed. Overall, nothing at all happened, managers looked after their own kind and the worst that happened for some was having to go back to IC positions. The article is most likely AI generated since it says this was announced "last month" and the article is from March, but…

These numbers always seem huge but also don't forget that Amazon employs 1.5 million people.

A 14,000 employee cut is less than one percent.

Of course I know there are a lot of warehouse and delivery employees but they have managers, too.

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

#70
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'm not saying get rid of management. I'm saying get rid of bad management.

How do you tell the difference?

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