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This is just the latest round of cuts at Amazon: "From April through September, it reduced head count by almost 80,000 people, primarily shrinking its hourly st

This is just the latest round of cuts at Amazon: "From April through September, it reduced head count by almost 80,000 people, primarily shrinking its hourly staff through high attrition." Also: "Amazon froze hiring in several smaller teams in September. In October, it stopped filling more than 10,000 open roles in its core retail business. Two weeks ago, it froze corporate hiring across the company, including its cloud computing division, for the next few months."

mjr00 4y ago
There's a big difference between reducing the number of hourly workers (warehouse, drivers) and cutting 10,000 corporate jobs.
- green-eclipse 4y ago
  Agreed. I'm just illustrating that it's part of an ongoing pattern at Amazon. Not some new, shocking thing. I'd expect more in the future.
- hhh 4y ago
  Why?
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  ...what is it? I really can't see a difference.
  - amflare 4y ago
    Hourly workers (unskilled labor) are flexible and cutting hours is almost as easy to reverse as it is to do in the first place. Cutting salaried employees (skilled labor) is a much harder and expensive decision to reverse. So doing so means that there is either a consistent issue that is not getting resolved, thus making them not worth the expense, or things are about to get so bad that the company feels that the savings are worth the loss of skilled labor. And clarify the difference between skilled and unskilled labor (which might make this make more sense), this is not a description of the work itself, but rather the barrier of entry. Anyone can be taken off the street and trained into an "unskilled" position with relative ease. That is not true for "skilled" positions though. Which is why Amazon's decision to start cutting corporate jobs represents a fundamental shift in their path going forward.
  - xeromal 4y ago
    Hourly employees are easier to replace because the training path is much shorter.
- oceanplexian 4y ago
  Amazon has something like 100k corporate employees, and their URA targets force managers to PIP approximately 6% of the corporate employees every year, so going from 6% to 10% isn’t exactly a massive change.
  - qbasic_forever 4y ago
    This is a reduction of 10% on top of the expected regular attrition (6%).
  - CydeWeys 4y ago
    This isn't going from 6 to 10% though, this is a one-time reduction of 10% on top of the normal 6%.
  - mjr00 4y ago
    Employees who are PIP'd are replaced, though. The positions themselves still exist. This is cutting 10k positions if I'm interpreting correctly, so it's really going from 0% to 4%. It may also impact entire teams or business lines.
  - EFreethought 4y ago
    Somewhat OT, but I never understood why so many corporations have this hard and fast rule that they have to fire (or give no bonus to) a set percentage every year: "We must fire X% of people." I have worked at a few firms that have done this, and I have heard from a few people their managers arbitrarily picked them to get knocked into a lower tier. Conversely, if they hired a big cohort of bozos one year, you know they would never say, "We would like to get rid of 15%, but our plan is only to get rid of 10%." They would have no problem going beyond 10%.
  - kjsingh 4y ago
    > so going from 6% to 10% isn’t exactly a massive change. It is if made overnight!
- paledot 4y ago
  True. The hourly workers are more likely to be living paycheque-to-paycheque, and their lives will be more impacted than a tech worker with 12 months of runway and job prospects everywhere.
paxys 4y ago
Attrition rates at Amazon are really something else
- derac 4y ago
  They do have 1.5 million employees (per Google)
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Which can be confusing because there are two amazons - the Walmart competitor and the cloud company. Same with Apple, to be fair. Apple retail may employ more than Apple corporate.

mjr00 4y ago

There's a big difference between reducing the number of hourly workers (warehouse, drivers) and cutting 10,000 corporate jobs.

green-eclipse 4y ago
Agreed. I'm just illustrating that it's part of an ongoing pattern at Amazon. Not some new, shocking thing. I'd expect more in the future.
hhh 4y ago
Why?
giraffe_lady 4y ago
...what is it? I really can't see a difference.
- amflare 4y ago
  Hourly workers (unskilled labor) are flexible and cutting hours is almost as easy to reverse as it is to do in the first place. Cutting salaried employees (skilled labor) is a much harder and expensive decision to reverse. So doing so means that there is either a consistent issue that is not getting resolved, thus making them not worth the expense, or things are about to get so bad that the company feels that the savings are worth the loss of skilled labor. And clarify the difference between skilled and unskilled labor (which might make this make more sense), this is not a description of the work itself, but rather the barrier of entry. Anyone can be taken off the street and trained into an "unskilled" position with relative ease. That is not true for "skilled" positions though. Which is why Amazon's decision to start cutting corporate jobs represents a fundamental shift in their path going forward.
- xeromal 4y ago
  Hourly employees are easier to replace because the training path is much shorter.
oceanplexian 4y ago
Amazon has something like 100k corporate employees, and their URA targets force managers to PIP approximately 6% of the corporate employees every year, so going from 6% to 10% isn’t exactly a massive change.
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  This is a reduction of 10% on top of the expected regular attrition (6%).
- CydeWeys 4y ago
  This isn't going from 6 to 10% though, this is a one-time reduction of 10% on top of the normal 6%.
- mjr00 4y ago
  Employees who are PIP'd are replaced, though. The positions themselves still exist. This is cutting 10k positions if I'm interpreting correctly, so it's really going from 0% to 4%. It may also impact entire teams or business lines.
- EFreethought 4y ago
  Somewhat OT, but I never understood why so many corporations have this hard and fast rule that they have to fire (or give no bonus to) a set percentage every year: "We must fire X% of people." I have worked at a few firms that have done this, and I have heard from a few people their managers arbitrarily picked them to get knocked into a lower tier. Conversely, if they hired a big cohort of bozos one year, you know they would never say, "We would like to get rid of 15%, but our plan is only to get rid of 10%." They would have no problem going beyond 10%.
- kjsingh 4y ago
  > so going from 6% to 10% isn’t exactly a massive change. It is if made overnight!
paledot 4y ago
True. The hourly workers are more likely to be living paycheque-to-paycheque, and their lives will be more impacted than a tech worker with 12 months of runway and job prospects everywhere.

paxys 4y ago

Attrition rates at Amazon are really something else

derac 4y ago
They do have 1.5 million employees (per Google)
- bombcar 4y ago
  Which can be confusing because there are two amazons - the Walmart competitor and the cloud company. Same with Apple, to be fair. Apple retail may employ more than Apple corporate.