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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

#71

Post by CharlieDigital »

raincom wrote: post #65
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…

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

Incredibly hard. If there were some formula and it was really easy to just keep "the good ones", then every company would only have great managers. It's simply not that easy at scale.

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

#72

Post by xmprt »

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.

Working with Microsoft's customer facing tools and people is very different from working inside Microsoft. Not that you'll like one if you hate the other but just that they're different enough that you can't judge one by your experience with the other.

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

#74

Post by wnevets »

VincentEvans wrote: post #30

I am curious how do you just hire 14,000 managers at the cost of $3.5B yearly more than you needed? Maybe they should fire the guy responsible for THAT.

The people at that level of management are god like geniuses who must never be questioned.

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

#75

Post by lysace »

bsimpson wrote: post #67
lysace wrote: 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 ic…

We mostly didn't have RCA jacks in Europe when I grew up.

But nevermind; this is not the same.

Amazon largely consists of two internally grown businesses: Retail and AWS. They are wildly different.

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

#77

Post by duskwuff »

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 don't think OP was necessarily trying to imply "there should be no managers", but simply "I don't want to become a manager" - which is perfectly valid.

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

#78

Post by beambot »

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'm saying get rid of bad management.

How do you propose measuring good versus bad management?

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

#79

Post by lovich »

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 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.

You can say that but it only really works if you give agency to your employees. That doesn’t seem to align with Amazons policy’s lately like RTO5.

How do you micromanage employees without managers? And note if your answer is “don’t”, I don’t think that’s an option as the drive for shit like that appears to be coming from the top, not middle managers misinterpreting orders

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

#80

Post by jmull »

nomel wrote: post #58
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. Th…

These guys either hired 14K bad/useless managers, or fired 14K decent, useful managers, or some combination of both.

I wouldn't bet they will suddenly become good at hiring managers.

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