All corporate or just expensive US based corporate employees? I didn’t see any specifics listed besides “pandemic era over hiring”. I think their talking points were pulled from an old 1pager this should have been “due to efficiency gains in AI”.
Earnings report in 3 days maybe they were a few metric shy.
> Amazon is planning to cut as many as 30,000 corporate jobs beginning on Tuesday, as the company works to pare expenses and compensate for overhiring during the peak demand of the pandemic, according to three people familiar with the matter.
It's been over 5 years and I don't know how many rounds of Amazon layoffs since the pandemic. How are investors still fooled into thinking this is a valid excuse?
Three months from now - Amazon hiring 50k new corporate workers.
Constant churn is simply the new big tech strategy to keep employees on their toes. Plus it lets them wipe away RSU comp that was granted to employees when stock prices were way lower.
Looking at the people around me, people don’t do very good work when they are constantly on their toes. A lot of time is wasted on the rumor mill about the next round of layoffs, people are hesitant to invest in big (needed) changes and opt to just keep the lights on, and technical decisions are often colored by what will still work after person X if laid off (if they ever get laid off) vs picking the best option in front of them. The churn also continually re-opens process gaps, repeats the same projects over and over on a new stack, and other hamster wheel type activity that do nothing to move the business forward. It simply keeps people busy and frustrated while the leadership churn is used to pad their resumes with fancy sounding projects that never actually get completed, but it’s enough for them to leverage it into a new job with a big title.
Meanwhile, 30k Amazon-minded individuals are unleashed on to other tech companies to evangelize Amazon products and services. The design of it all is really apparent.
Is this how it plays out, or does it backfire with the former employees being bitter about the layoff and not wanting to be free evangelists for the company didn’t show them any loyalty.
Yeah but they wouldn't risk disruption. They live or die in large part on Holiday Sales, it's a massive part of their revenue stream. If the risk that this could cause disruption wouldn't be worth it if they expected the holiday shopping season to be busy.
That’s PR speak for “our leadership has messed up big time and this was the most convenient excuse we could come up with that doesn’t just throw our C-suite in front of the bus.”
Earnings call is this week. Expect some good tap dancing.
And they perviously laid off 27K in 2022 because of "pandemic overhiring". I wouldn't be surprised if in a decade from now they will still be laying off because of the "pandemic overhiring"
Remember these things tend to be lumpy. While that’s a bit over 10% of corporate employees depending on how you count some teams won’t get touched and thus other areas will either get blown up entirely or have layoff rates of much higher than 10%.
There's a lot of reflecting & gesticulating we can do about these companies, as they downsize & try to de-leverage the world's labor.
But the reciprocal side is also worth soulsearching some into too. It feels like such the crisis of our time that we don't have good things for people to do, respectable enough efforts, that so much is ensnared and tangled up in such huge enterprise running along at its own pace. I crave a government that tries to encourage new players, new enterprises, that outright lopsidedly favors those trying to get things started.
Other systematic drivers here also filter out so many would be entrepreneurs and business owners. Cost of essential food, shelter, transportation, health care needs has become incredibly daunting to many, and greatly challenges the ability for new things to get started.
Also the unchecked acquisitions spree of the world brings up all the opportunity in such uncomeptitive and fragile large companies. If we allowed small medium size companies to acquire each other, but kept more controls on bigger companies, we wouldn't be facing such wild shocks from what a couple big players do on the world.
> This latest move signals that Amazon is likely realizing enough AI-driven productivity gains within corporate teams to support a substantial reduction in force," said Sky Canaves, an eMarketer analyst. "Amazon has also been under pressure in the short-term to offset the long-term investments in building out its AI infrastructure."
What is this take based on?
How likely are the cuts due to overhiring for projects that are being axed, vs for projects that are continuing with automation?
And no offense to Ms Canaves, but why is an “eMarketer analyst” being called on to explain Amazon hiring decisions relating to their progress in AI?
> The cuts beginning this week may impact a variety of divisions within Amazon, including human resources, known as People Experience and Technology, devices and services and operations, among others, the people said.
> Amazon includes AWS. They’re not “separate companies.”
Actually, they are. Perhaps what is causing your confusion is that other parts of Amazon, such as Ring or Rivian, are also separate companies, whereas parts such as Alexa and Amazon Music aren't.
By your definition then every little part of “Amazon” is technically a separate “company” including every geo. For the purposes of the discussion at hand they’re all the same. Amazon PXT and finance is the same team as AWS PXT and finance.
Not surprising given folks have been saying Amazon/AWS has been a bloated mess for a while now. After periods of strong growth it’s not unusual for things to need a good cleanup.
Unfortunately good folks find themselves on the wrong team at the wrong time while top leadership, which created the bloated mess, generally squeaks by.
> Not surprising given folks have been saying Amazon/AWS has been a bloated mess for a while now.
Who exactly do you think is saying this? Because from what I'm understanding, so far Amazon has been decimating teams at the expense of overworking them even more, and by cutting projects at the expense of cancelling maintenance and feature work.
Like a lot of big tech companies Amazon is a small number of teams with profitable products and a whole bunch of other things that don’t make money. Events like this are when the teams not contributing to the bottom line are cleaned up.
> Like a lot of big tech companies Amazon is a small number of teams with profitable products and a whole bunch of other things that don’t make money.
I think that's a simplistic view of the issue. At Amazon, each team owns at best specific features embedded in products. Some projects such as e-readers are there as loss leaders to support cash cows such as it's ebook market. From your simplistic opinion, Amazon would have cut zero employees from it's books organization as it's business is booming and it's a profit center. But that doesn't match reality.
Also note that you are making that unfounded claim while commenting on news that Amazon is going to focus it's firing round on HR. Is HR a profit center now?
> Events like this are when the teams not contributing to the bottom line are cleaned up.
Except that's bullshit. Amazon decimated teams by firing new arrivals and by transferring projects out of the US into Europe and Asia. This hasn't anything to do with efficiency or performance in mind.
Reminder 'cleaned up' means lives ruined, sick people losing the ability to afford insurance (COBRA is insanely expensive especially considering you just lost your job), homes lost, families forced to move and children losing their friends/forced to new schools, and in some cases suicide.
Earnings report in 3 days maybe they were a few metric shy.
It's been over 5 years and I don't know how many rounds of Amazon layoffs since the pandemic. How are investors still fooled into thinking this is a valid excuse?
Constant churn is simply the new big tech strategy to keep employees on their toes. Plus it lets them wipe away RSU comp that was granted to employees when stock prices were way lower.
Edit: Doing it right before the holidays can only mean their data on consumption / consumers is grim.
Are many corporate roles seasonal?
Funny, they said the same thing about AWS before layoffs last year.
Earnings call is this week. Expect some good tap dancing.
Is going to be lovely to see how they spin this as AI optimization ....
But the reciprocal side is also worth soulsearching some into too. It feels like such the crisis of our time that we don't have good things for people to do, respectable enough efforts, that so much is ensnared and tangled up in such huge enterprise running along at its own pace. I crave a government that tries to encourage new players, new enterprises, that outright lopsidedly favors those trying to get things started.
Other systematic drivers here also filter out so many would be entrepreneurs and business owners. Cost of essential food, shelter, transportation, health care needs has become incredibly daunting to many, and greatly challenges the ability for new things to get started.
Also the unchecked acquisitions spree of the world brings up all the opportunity in such uncomeptitive and fragile large companies. If we allowed small medium size companies to acquire each other, but kept more controls on bigger companies, we wouldn't be facing such wild shocks from what a couple big players do on the world.
What is this take based on?
How likely are the cuts due to overhiring for projects that are being axed, vs for projects that are continuing with automation?
And no offense to Ms Canaves, but why is an “eMarketer analyst” being called on to explain Amazon hiring decisions relating to their progress in AI?
From the article:
> The cuts beginning this week may impact a variety of divisions within Amazon, including human resources, known as People Experience and Technology, devices and services and operations, among others, the people said.
Actually, they are. Perhaps what is causing your confusion is that other parts of Amazon, such as Ring or Rivian, are also separate companies, whereas parts such as Alexa and Amazon Music aren't.
Either way, that's in line with the true definition of "AGI" and getting closer to the timeframe of 2030 to do more with less.
This is obviously not that. This is a cut before reporting quarterly earnings.
Unfortunately good folks find themselves on the wrong team at the wrong time while top leadership, which created the bloated mess, generally squeaks by.
30k, nearly 10% of their workforce, isn't a little "cleanup to reduce bloat" it's a massacre.
Who exactly do you think is saying this? Because from what I'm understanding, so far Amazon has been decimating teams at the expense of overworking them even more, and by cutting projects at the expense of cancelling maintenance and feature work.
I think that's a simplistic view of the issue. At Amazon, each team owns at best specific features embedded in products. Some projects such as e-readers are there as loss leaders to support cash cows such as it's ebook market. From your simplistic opinion, Amazon would have cut zero employees from it's books organization as it's business is booming and it's a profit center. But that doesn't match reality.
Also note that you are making that unfounded claim while commenting on news that Amazon is going to focus it's firing round on HR. Is HR a profit center now?
> Events like this are when the teams not contributing to the bottom line are cleaned up.
Except that's bullshit. Amazon decimated teams by firing new arrivals and by transferring projects out of the US into Europe and Asia. This hasn't anything to do with efficiency or performance in mind.