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Amazon laying off corporate employees in rare cutback
- knowflux 9y agoAcc to article, seems like it’s happening in established businesses like Retail. Maybe those old businesses are due for some consolidation? In last earnings release, Bezos said he’s doubling down on Alexa, which I presume includes increased hiring.
- gargarplex 9y agoVoice search is already huge and I imagine it may be even bigger. I see Amazon as a threat to Google in this area.
- homero 9y agoIt's always astounded me how a technology change can kill a company overnight. Google almost died with searches going mobile but somehow bought Android and survived but killed BlackBerry. Now voice search is a risk.
- sah2ed 9y agoThat's a bit revisionist. Google saw a tiny but steady rise in mobile searches and realized they needed to become mobile focused. They acquired a startup called Danger Inc. which brought in Andy Rubin who helped birth their Android efforts. Rubin saw just how good the iPhone was then threw out their work to start from scratch [1] before they eventually put out their first device: the Android G1. Steve Jobs was furious at the similarities with the iPhone because he had gotten firm promises Google would not copy the iPhone in their phone efforts. Eventually, Eric Schmidt resigned from Apple's board when it was clear both companies would be competing head on in mobile. [1] https://amp.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-on-android-founder-andy-rubin-big-arrogant-f-2013-11 https://amp.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-on-android-founde...
- sharemywin 9y agoI could see these devices given way free as some kind of set-top+assistant if you buy our TV service.
- angstrom 9y agoHeck, I've had power companies offering google home for free if I select a green energy provider.
- sah2ed 9y ago> Amazon as a threat to Google in this area. LOL. That is like saying Apple (iPhones) are a threat to Google (Android) when it was Apple that first brought touch-based smartphones to market. You probably meant: "Google is a threat to Amazon in this area" because Amazon invented and still dominates the smart speaker category. In other words, Google didn't know a market existed for such devices until Amazon created a market for them.
- kbutler 9y ago"Amazon's dominance in the emerging area of voice search is a threat to Google's general dominance in search." (Like the Apple's iPhone platform is a threat to Google, which Google is attempting to counter by promoting Android.)
- Grazester 9y agoAmazon might have been the first to launch a dedicated device that can do voice search but Google was doing it(on Android) before such a device was launched by amazon.
- sah2ed 9y agoRight, but were their efforts successful? That's the main difference here, bringing a new product to market successfully. Long before voice assistants/search became a thing with smart phones there was Google 411 ... which no one remembers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOOG-411 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOOG-411
- ArchReaper 9y agoYes, they had been successful with voice search long before Alexa ever came out, and continue to do it well. Google is THE search giant, you'd have to be acting intentionally obtuse to not understand his point.
- ucaetano 9y agohttps://searchengineland.com/google-reveals-20-percent-queries-voice-queries-249917 https://searchengineland.com/google-reveals-20-percent-queri... I'd guess that 20% of Google's mobile queries in 2016 are a few orders of magnitude larger than Amazon's total voice search queries, effectively making Amazon's voice queries a drop in the ocean.
- saturdaysaint 9y agoSurveys show that Alexa is being used for basic Siri 1.0 searches ("What's the weather","Play x on Pandora", timers, alarms, novelty questions) and little else. Few people have activated a skill or ordered something. A graphical user interface is going to be a vastly richer and more useful interactive experience for a very long time.
- mcny 9y ago> Few people have activated a skill or ordered something. As far as I know, I cannot enable a skill on my echo dot itself. I have to do it through the app. This is friction that I don't need to tell you is bad for engagement. I wager Amazon's first mover advantage is very much over stated.
- akhilcacharya 9y agoIf you know the exact skill, you can just say “Enable Jeopardy skill”. https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201848700 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
- ghaff 9y agoI don't mind that so much. My issue with skills is that there is a very limited number of incantations that I can keep in my head to summon the correct behavior from Alexa.
- moonka 9y agoI wonder what type of positions are being targeted in these layoffs? They mentioned which groups but not whom.
- randomfool 9y agoMy understanding is that most groups outside of Alexa and AWS are in a hiring freeze and they are trying to cut down on the amount of middle-management across the board.
- taurath 9y agoCan confirm, the recruiter spam I get is now only Alexa and AWS - the retail section has all but stopped.
- Slansitartop 9y agoThat's pretty terrible because their retail site still needs a lot of work. Sort by stars has always been broken and the problems with counterfeit products and fake reviews needs to be dealt with.
- gdulli 9y agoI think it's a safe assumption that search isn't broken, it's just presented whatever way optimizes revenue while still using your choice of sort column as a guideline to keep it from being too blatant a lie.
- Slansitartop 9y agoIt's broken from a usability standpoint. "Search by average stars" will give me pages and pages of 5-star products with tiny numbers of ratings before I'll see what I really want: a product with 1,000 ratings and an overall rating of 4.9.
- jxub 9y agoMaybe Bezos decided that on that front mediocre is good enough and decided to move on to other sectors where the competition is more astute than in retail...
- radiorental 9y agoCould this be in any way related to the roll out of HQ2? Using that expansion to trim perceived dead-wood? If so, this might be the first of a few re-orgs.
- zitterbewegung 9y agoIt seems like the point of HQ2 is to appease the current administration for tax cuts, allow for them to cut back on the fact they overexpanded their teams, get even more tax breaks from the local government where they expand, and get a bunch new fresh talent that can be worked to death.
- jonknee 9y agoConsidering they have over 4,000 active job postings for Seattle and are building several new office towers... No.
- Animats 9y agoSo why do they want a second corporate headquarters?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- walrus01 9y agoThey have very nearly exhausted the pool of strong technical talent that can be recruited locally within the seattle area, who are not already gainfully employed at some other tech company. Also because building new office campus space in Seattle is becoming a bottleneck. Amazon is spread out through a bunch of temporarily leased buildings until the new towers are finished. Also they have sort of exhausted the number of people who are willing to relocate to Seattle.
- leggomylibro 9y agoAlso, a lot of the people who were willing to relocate to Seattle are reluctant to stay after years of worsening ostracization and seething resentment.
- devmunchies 9y agoI moved to Seattle almost 2 years ago now. My main reasons for wanting to leave are the 9 sunless months per year and I feel a little put off by people. I can't put my finger on it, its very nuanced.
- traskjd 9y agoHmm, also in Seattle and seem to recall a record long summer last year with 100+ days of no rain (well, one which just managed to trip it by volume at SEATAC in the middle). Personally, I think the whole 'Seattle has horrible' weather is pretty overblown. It's grey for a couple of months. I'm writing this now, in February, to a perfectly blue sky. It is cold, but not grey in the least. I've personally found it more challenging that folks don't seem to socialize much. They just work non-stop throughout the week, then perhaps do something on the weekend. It contrasts quite a lot to when I was in New Zealand where you frequently see your friends after work.
- lev99 9y agoSeattle Times likes to give Amazon bad press. Seattle has enough other tech companies to absorb a few hundred jobs. Companies routinely end up over-hiring or having redundant positions. It appears that they are laying off less than 10% of their Seattle staff, while they are still expanding the amount of office space they occupy in Seattle. This seems like no big deal for Seattle and Amazon.
- myroon5 9y ago"less than 10% of their Seattle staff" even less than 1%
- lev99 9y agoThe problem is "a few hundred" is an undefined number. 400 would be about 1%, which would be fairly reported as a few hundred. My ceiling number is very high, but I would believe more than 1% are let go.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoDoes amazon really employ 40,000 people in its corporate headquarters? Microsoft does, but it has a much much bigger campus.
- foota 9y agoIt doesn't really, maybe by footprint on the ground, but Amazon has lots of tall buildings.
- wickawic 9y agoYes they do, and the math works out. About 8k people work in their two belltown towers alone.
- mrep 9y agoYes according to [0]. Just look at their campus map [1]. It is massive and some of those buildings are dozens of stories tall. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/p/feature/4kc8ovgnyf996yn https://www.amazon.com/p/feature/4kc8ovgnyf996yn [1]: https://static.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/7ef8dbd0-9436-11e7-b343-b7c75282038d-960x960.jpg https://static.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/7...
- everdev 9y agoI've always wondered how companies like Amazon and Apple with piles of cash justify not giving raises or passing laying off people. I understand that you want to be smart with your money but if I'm on the business end of this decision it probably hurts more than getting laid off from a company that's struggling and has no other options.
- rowyourboat 9y agoThey justify it by the same reasoning that any other company justifies a layoff. How much money the company makes does not really factor in, they don't exist for the benefit of society.
- beambot 9y ago> but if I'm on the business end... How would you justify the raises and keeping the redundant positions -- especially if they were already paid market rates or if they were underperformers?
- cobookman 9y agoOver-hiring can be an issue as well. Too many cooks in the kitchen isn't a good thing.
- jxub 9y agoYes, I've also been curious about how the rainforest company can get away with treating its employees supposedly not as well as other top tech companies, and other than AWS, I don't know of any special tech they've got going on for them (maybe the stock options carrot is the materialistic but true answer). Also, surprisingly, both Amazon and Apple aren't really known for prolific OSS contributions according to their size.
- jack_h 9y ago> Also, surprisingly, both Amazon and Apple aren't really known for prolific OSS contributions according to their size. I can't speak to Amazon, but Apple has quite a few prolific OSS contributions. Off the top of my head there's llvm/clang, cups, swift, GCD, and webkit.
- amznthroway 9y agoThe hiring freeze has already been horrendous. We're told to keep hitting all our goals even if we lose people and can't hire to backfill. Now we're just straight up losing people to layoffs? Keeping the lights on alone is barely possible with the resources we have. It would be one thing if we were in dire straights as a company. Imho, this is just short-sighted nonsense so some senior leader can hit an arbitrary goal and get a bonus. I wonder if Alexa or AWS are hiring.
- jonknee 9y ago> I wonder if Alexa or AWS are hiring. ... The very first sentence of the article: > as the company shifts resources into fast-growing areas like its work on voice assistant Alexa
- dboreham 9y ago>short-sighted nonsense so some senior leader can hit an arbitrary goal and get a bonus This is in fact how most business decisions are made.
- BookmarkSaver 9y agoYes, Amazon is known for its short-sightedness...
- KallDrexx 9y agoThat's funny if they've had a hiring freeze since last week I got contacted by an Amazon recruiter wanting me to move to Seattle
- Negative1 9y agoAt first I assumed this was a stack ranking type "cutting the dead weight loose" move but doesn't appear to be so. The article cites "too much staff for the work" but that seems strange; Amazon has never been bereft of ambition ("Think Big"). What would be the real strategic impetus for slashing hundreds of positions? How does this jibe with leadership principles like "Hire and Develop the Best" and "Insist on the Highest Standards"?
- gorbot 9y agoAnother leadership principle is frugality. No idea who or why people were fired, but could be to save $. I know that amazon in general is trying to get more frugal / profitable
- bitL 9y agoRoll-out of NLP/SR/TTS ML system automating most of customer interaction? If you are a seller on Amazon, it already feels like talking to bots when you hit some issues, maybe they can now automate most of those issue types?
- BookmarkSaver 9y ago>"Insist on the Highest Standards"? Don't maintain costs that that aren't adding net value?
- philipwhiuk 9y agoFrom the article it looks like duplication between acquisitions.
- tyingq 9y agoA layoff of any kind or scale is interesting for AMZN, given that they have so much diversity of teams, jobs, skills, products, etc. It's interesting that they couldn't repurpose a few hundred people, even given their infamous up or out mentality. Sounds like they are knowingly giving up good people since the current culture fires anyone that doesn't produce already. Willingly giving up good people doesn't seem like a healthy signal. Edit: Encountered this at a company acquired by private equity right before the 2008 bubble. They did 3 straight stack-rank/fire-the-bottom rounds. Was clear in the second round we were letting go of really good talent to the competition solely for some executive's bonus tied to short term numbers. And, it did bite them later.
- paulddraper 9y ago> Sounds like they are knowingly giving up good people since the current culture fires anyone that doesn't produce already. I wouldn't be surprised if these lay offs were also chosen to increase average employee quality.
- KKKKkkkk1 9y agoIt's a super healthy signal. Let's say hypothetically that Amazon started a VR project and hired a team of 100 PhDs whose expertise is VR to work on that project. After 2 years, the company realized that it's not working out and shut that project down. Because of the bad optics of layoffs (especially of such highly skilled engineers), the engineers were reassigned to various positions that require expertise in computer graphics. Bear in mind that these 100 engineers have niche skills and most of them feel that VR is their life's calling; they're not interested in generic computer graphics. They are overpaid, underemployed, and miserable. The best of them leave after a month of two; the remainder trudges on for a year until they also leave or get pushed out. The outcome is that Amazon has wasted shareholder money and got themselves a bad rep with those engineers (and their friends). A straight layoff would have worked much better, but unfortunately most companies don't have the balls for it.
- watwut 9y ago> Bear in mind that these 100 engineers have niche skills and most of them feel that VR is their life's calling; they're not interested in generic computer graphics. They are overpaid, underemployed, and miserable. Except that you just made all that up. It is a huge major if. Especially that part about calling and the part about them having only niche skills. Guess what those "best ones who leave" will do? You guessed right, they will do not VR.
- perseusprime11 9y agoThey may be falling into the short term trap of wall street. With all the praise on Jeff Bezos recently, he will have to do anything to not take a step back and keep up with wall street’s expectations.
- zebraflask 9y agoWell, the whole thing with Amazon is "frugality." That's a frugal thing to do.
- kirillzubovsky 9y agolol. Amazon employs almost half-million people, and still, a layoff of a couple hundred make it to the news.
- kheiron1729 9y agoI'm gonna go all caps on this one STAY AWAY! TOXIC WORK ENVIRONMENT!!! source: I was laid off without any justification