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Amazon says it didn't cut people because of money. But because of 'culture'

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Re: Amazon says it didn't cut people because of money. But because of 'culture'

#91

Post by episteme »

warkdarrior wrote: post #20
standardUser wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you end up with a lot more people That's a funny way to describe deliberately wasting thousands of work hours screening, interviewing and hiring people they didn't need. It seems like those making these staffing decisions should be the first to go, yet that never seems to be the case.

Correct. CEO's layoff explanation indicates two things. First, the people who made the hiring decision back then were wrong, since they seemingly hired a lot of people for unneeded roles. Second, the people in charge now lack the vision or ideas on how to put 14,000 already-trained employees to good use on new projects, new products, etc.

You can do the right thing and still need to reverse the decision. If all the signals in the world suggest you will be able to support more initiatives in future then you should hire. If in the near future the economy changes dramatically and you can't support those hires, you need to let them go.

Re: Amazon says it didn't cut people because of money. But because of 'culture'

#92

Post by greenie_beans »

legitster wrote: post #90
honestduane wrote: post #82

There's been a lot of debate around Amazon's hiring practices, particularly given the conflicting data and statements from the company. A core issue seems to be that Amazon has alienated a significant portion of its domestic engineering talent pool. Many experienced engineers have left, and others seem unwilling to return, even when offered higher-level roles. I personally was an L7 engineer and turned down a boomera…

The link you posted is broken. But I can tell you with fair certainty that Amazon's high turnover rate is NOT happening in their engineering departments, though. It's happening in their retail or business departments. I'm kind of horrified by the rise of anti-immigrant rhetoric in engineering circles online and how normalized it's becoming. (Especially troubling how much Indians in particular are drawing ire). Is it…

> Is it really that much different if Amazon brings in a foreign worker to Seattle vs someone from Mississippi?

in what way do you mean different? i would say it is wildly different

Re: Amazon says it didn't cut people because of money. But because of 'culture'

#94

Post by legitster »

greenie_beans wrote: post #92
legitster wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The link you posted is broken. But I can tell you with fair certainty that Amazon's high turnover rate is NOT happening in their engineering departments, though. It's happening in their retail or business departments. I'm kind of horrified by the rise of anti-immigrant rhetoric in engineering circles online and how normalized it's becoming. (Especially troubling how much Indians in particular are drawing ire). Is it…

> Is it really that much different if Amazon brings in a foreign worker to Seattle vs someone from Mississippi? in what way do you mean different? i would say it is wildly different

If you're worried about from poorer areas coming in and taking our jobs, how much distinction is there really whether they come from a poorer state or a poorer country?

America has free and open trade within its borders. Nobody seems to mind that there are no visa restrictions on someone from Mississippi taking a job in California.

The distinction we make between a foreigner coming to take a job and a domestic worker taking a job is (with some particular exceptions) is largely a mental construct.

Re: Amazon says it didn't cut people because of money. But because of 'culture'

#95

Post by honestduane »

legitster wrote: post #90
honestduane wrote: post #82

There's been a lot of debate around Amazon's hiring practices, particularly given the conflicting data and statements from the company. A core issue seems to be that Amazon has alienated a significant portion of its domestic engineering talent pool. Many experienced engineers have left, and others seem unwilling to return, even when offered higher-level roles. I personally was an L7 engineer and turned down a boomera…

The link you posted is broken. But I can tell you with fair certainty that Amazon's high turnover rate is NOT happening in their engineering departments, though. It's happening in their retail or business departments. I'm kind of horrified by the rise of anti-immigrant rhetoric in engineering circles online and how normalized it's becoming. (Especially troubling how much Indians in particular are drawing ire). Is it…

Link updated.

Re: Amazon says it didn't cut people because of money. But because of 'culture'

#96

Post by Nicook »

arethuza wrote: post #26
treetalker wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gervais Principle

The problem with reading that is that it is, I find, almost impossible to stop classifying people into sociopath, clueless or losers....

hello fellow sociopath

Re: Amazon says it didn't cut people because of money. But because of 'culture'

#97

Post by klipklop »

linguae wrote: post #65
supportengineer wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm starting to think offshoring is better for America. Because house prices are unaffordable. Should a simple house really be $2 million ?

Be careful what you wish for. We could end up in a situation where we have unremarkable homes for $2 million and no local jobs capable of making the mortgage payments.

We are already pretty much there. Only probably a few percent can buy homes now in areas that have good job markets. The SF bay is firmly a 1%'er area now to buy a single family home. You need to now have two L5 incomes or so to even consider it...and somehow make that wage for 30 years... Yeah, no.

Re: Amazon says it didn't cut people because of money. But because of 'culture'

#98

Post by Nicook »

golly_ned wrote: post #71
jrauser wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the better decisions I ever made was not ignoring emails from folks recruiting for Amazon in 2003. It was a different place back then, and truly like "the world's largest startup." The other thing that was different back then was that the people I worked with were all so blindingly smart. I'm pretty smart, but in 2003 I often felt like the dumbest person in the room[1]. In 2025 that feeling was rare, and not s…

When did things start going south, in terms of what year, or what events?

There's a bunch of milestones, for me the standout one was managers starting to abuse marking tickets for large events as "secret" to stop people from reading their screwups. Someone leaked that the cause for some large AWS outage was someone oopsing some CLI command, and it seemed to trigger a pretty large shift.

Re: Amazon says it didn't cut people because of money. But because of 'culture'

#99

Post by GiorgioG »

jrauser wrote: post #28
GiorgioG wrote: post #4

Best decision I ever made was repeatedly ignoring emails from Amazon recruiters while they were allowing remote work around the pandemic. Fuck that place.

One of the better decisions I ever made was not ignoring emails from folks recruiting for Amazon in 2003. It was a different place back then, and truly like "the world's largest startup." The other thing that was different back then was that the people I worked with were all so blindingly smart. I'm pretty smart, but in 2003 I often felt like the dumbest person in the room[1]. In 2025 that feeling was rare, and not s…

I don't necessarily need an electric place to work. Smart people and a boring mission/tech stack is fine. I just think their layoff(s) in disguise when they forced everyone to RTO is/was a slap in the face. Instant, permanent loss of trust.
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