7 ms·

I think this was orchestrated to not give Amazon employees any internal (or very few) options for transfer. First they freeze corp hiring and thousands of posit

I think this was orchestrated to not give Amazon employees any internal (or very few) options for transfer. First they freeze corp hiring and thousands of positions dry up, then a long drawn out layoff is initiated that gets leaked in the press way before any senior leadership pipes up to talk about it. You have allegedly have 60 days to find a new position in the company. What positions? There is a hiring freeze. Plus in classic Amazon fashion the severance is on the low end of the industry. Plus the added departures just from the stress of not knowing who gets cut next. I guess this has been orchestrated for maximum attrition, which seems to be their forte over there under the orange smile. I'm not a fan of Zuckerberg, but his communication about the layoff at Meta was much more timely, clear and empathetic than this note from Jassy. - Zuckerberg: https://about.fb.com/news/2022/11/mark-zuckerberg-layoff-message-to-employees/ https://about.fb.com/news/2022/11/mark-zuckerberg-layoff-mes... - Jassy: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/a-note-from-ceo-andy-jassy-about-role-eliminations https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/a-note-from-ce...

jlynn 4y ago
Actually speaking with people at Amazon, teams are accepting internal transfers. External hiring is frozen.
- allthecybers 4y ago
  They are accepting transfers. The number of available roles to transfer to has been drastically reduced.
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  This is not true. For example all of PrimeVideo has frozen even internal hiring, despite being identified as a growth sector for Amazon. A few teams may still be hiring but they are very rare exceptions.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    Uh-oh, this doesn't bode well for The Rings of Power...
    - gscott 4y ago
      The Rings of Power has a baked in number of seasons that were part of the deal. So they are good.
      - midoridensha 4y ago
        Not necessarily. They're contractually required to make X number of episodes, but there's no way to guarantee quality or ratings. If they make cuts in the staffing of budget for this show, the show quality will drop. Suppose they cut the VFX budget by 75%, for instance: the show will have horrible FX, but they can still meet their contractual requirements. Or they could cut actor salaries in future seasons (which maybe haven't been negotiated with the actors yet), causing key actors to quit, necessitating either re-casting (which is usually bad) or rewriting the story.
    - iLoveOncall 4y ago
      Rings of Power is Amazon Studios, not Amazon Prime Video.
to11mtm 4y ago
> I'm not a fan of Zuckerberg, but his communication about the layoff at Meta was much more timely, clear and empathetic than this note from Jassy. Ironically I remember some rabblerousing around Zuck's announcement as well but overall I would have to agree; Meta was a bit more transparent vs the staggered approach we are seeing from Amazon. It's weird because there's still a 'public gap' with at least Amazon's announcement; as a person who has been at bigcorps, I know a hiring freeze is not a hard freeze or transfer-freeze, necessarily. But the overall messaging here is a bit more grim. > Plus the added departures just from the stress of not knowing who gets cut next. My cynical and experienced self knows that I've sat in interviews where beforehand I was given a psychological profile based on how the candidate answered a questionnaire. (The company was sub 2k employees, which is worth mentioning because it obfuscates who I'm referring to but also shows how 'accessible' this service is.) From this viewpoint, I'd have to say they are hoping that the people who don't jump ship are those confident enough their existing options will vest that they will stay, and can handle the impending work-life-balance disruptions. Of course, they might not -actually- be able to. And some who think they can, cannot, and that will come out in the woodwork. Perhaps more sadly though, are those who couldn't make it and suffered external effects. It's a real concern. I was 'stuck' in a job due to the Great Recession and the consequences of not just quitting and doing some random minwage gig cost me a good 5+ years of my life to get back on my feet (There's still parts I'm trying to fix!) tl;dr - This sounds like turnover for SDEs may get closer to warehouse worker turnover.
- bink 4y ago
  I remember complaints about Zuckerberg's announcement too, but they were more about the tone of the announcement than the fact that people were being laid off. His email suggested that some people weren't pulling their weight and needed to pick it up or resign. Even if that were the case that's a management or business culture problem and shaming people isn't the proper way to solve it.
- lunarpunk 4y ago
  I'm very curious, how did staying at a job throw you off your feet more than doing a random minwage gig? Sometimes I have a feeling I could do with a random minwage gig for some time due to fatigue from programming in a corporate environment, but have been putting it off due to it being a questionable financial decision, especially now with a looming recession. Wha
db1234 4y ago
Meta employees were angry about the sudden layoff announcement and access cut off. Many wanted an advance notice like what Jassy has given. I guess there is no "right" way to do this. In this particular case, what Jassy seems to be saying to employees is that they should be customer obsessed and work hard for the holiday season but he cannot guarantee they will still have their job in Q1. That sucks. My heart goes out to everyone who is and will be impacted.
- makestuff 4y ago
  Yeah basically going to make everyone work hard over peak to try and keep their jobs then start the cuts in January. The cuts will probably be whatever the delta is between the missed revenue from q4 and what wall street estimated.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    > The cuts will probably be whatever the delta is between the missed revenue from q4 and what wall street estimated This is backward looking. The right thing to do is look at your forecasts of the future and adjust according to those (because the past is in the past and is unchangeable).
- bogota 4y ago
  At the end of the day all that really matters is the comp package.
- echelon 4y ago
  If a layoff isn't an attempt [1] to get rid of under-performing talent or dump under-performing business divisions, then I've always felt that across the board pay adjustments are a much more ethical approach. I'd be much more inclined to stay at a company that lowered my pay 20% than a company that laid off my coworkers. Not letting people go shows empathy, and uniform pay decreases align everyone's interests in getting back to a good state. I could see why some might jump ship from a poorly performing company during ordinary economic times, but during this down tech cycle, the grass isn't necessarily greener. Going elsewhere might be difficult or put your head back on the chopping block. [1] Or as some might view it, an opportunity.
jvanderbot 4y ago
Amazon has a bunch of internal openings and hiring waivers -- for the profit centers. I think most of the layoffs will be belt tightening. Including my entire org.
fred_is_fred 4y ago
If your goal is to cut costs and you have no net reduction in HC - then you've failed. What did you want them to do - besides not wanting them to cut costs. It's an even worse look to get rid of 20k people and have 25k openings after.
- jethro_tell 4y ago
  Maybe you have features that can be built somewhere like aws where you have already sold it to a customer and you just don't have the devs. And you know you're going to cut from a part of the company where there is no expectation that the features from the devs will increase revenue. Tuning up the Alexa weather app isn't likely to get more customers but and aws database offering that some other fortune 500 is asking for might be revenue positive a couple months after release. There more to it than the total cost of devs it matters what people are working on and if the products will produce revenue.
  - fred_is_fred 4y ago
    And they did that math and decided to reduce costs. They are not running a charity for wayward coders over there.
    - jethro_tell 4y ago
      I understand that, they had like 40k job openings a little while ago, and they are cutting 10k so my guess is that plenty get re-aligned and some don't.

jlynn 4y ago

Actually speaking with people at Amazon, teams are accepting internal transfers. External hiring is frozen.

allthecybers 4y ago
They are accepting transfers. The number of available roles to transfer to has been drastically reduced.
iLoveOncall 4y ago
This is not true. For example all of PrimeVideo has frozen even internal hiring, despite being identified as a growth sector for Amazon. A few teams may still be hiring but they are very rare exceptions.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  Uh-oh, this doesn't bode well for The Rings of Power...
  - gscott 4y ago
    The Rings of Power has a baked in number of seasons that were part of the deal. So they are good.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      Not necessarily. They're contractually required to make X number of episodes, but there's no way to guarantee quality or ratings. If they make cuts in the staffing of budget for this show, the show quality will drop. Suppose they cut the VFX budget by 75%, for instance: the show will have horrible FX, but they can still meet their contractual requirements. Or they could cut actor salaries in future seasons (which maybe haven't been negotiated with the actors yet), causing key actors to quit, necessitating either re-casting (which is usually bad) or rewriting the story.
  - iLoveOncall 4y ago
    Rings of Power is Amazon Studios, not Amazon Prime Video.

to11mtm 4y ago

> I'm not a fan of Zuckerberg, but his communication about the layoff at Meta was much more timely, clear and empathetic than this note from Jassy. Ironically I remember some rabblerousing around Zuck's announcement as well but overall I would have to agree; Meta was a bit more transparent vs the staggered approach we are seeing from Amazon. It's weird because there's still a 'public gap' with at least Amazon's announcement; as a person who has been at bigcorps, I know a hiring freeze is not a hard freeze or transfer-freeze, necessarily. But the overall messaging here is a bit more grim. > Plus the added departures just from the stress of not knowing who gets cut next. My cynical and experienced self knows that I've sat in interviews where beforehand I was given a psychological profile based on how the candidate answered a questionnaire. (The company was sub 2k employees, which is worth mentioning because it obfuscates who I'm referring to but also shows how 'accessible' this service is.) From this viewpoint, I'd have to say they are hoping that the people who don't jump ship are those confident enough their existing options will vest that they will stay, and can handle the impending work-life-balance disruptions. Of course, they might not -actually- be able to. And some who think they can, cannot, and that will come out in the woodwork. Perhaps more sadly though, are those who couldn't make it and suffered external effects. It's a real concern. I was 'stuck' in a job due to the Great Recession and the consequences of not just quitting and doing some random minwage gig cost me a good 5+ years of my life to get back on my feet (There's still parts I'm trying to fix!) tl;dr - This sounds like turnover for SDEs may get closer to warehouse worker turnover.

bink 4y ago
I remember complaints about Zuckerberg's announcement too, but they were more about the tone of the announcement than the fact that people were being laid off. His email suggested that some people weren't pulling their weight and needed to pick it up or resign. Even if that were the case that's a management or business culture problem and shaming people isn't the proper way to solve it.
lunarpunk 4y ago
I'm very curious, how did staying at a job throw you off your feet more than doing a random minwage gig? Sometimes I have a feeling I could do with a random minwage gig for some time due to fatigue from programming in a corporate environment, but have been putting it off due to it being a questionable financial decision, especially now with a looming recession. Wha

db1234 4y ago

Meta employees were angry about the sudden layoff announcement and access cut off. Many wanted an advance notice like what Jassy has given. I guess there is no "right" way to do this. In this particular case, what Jassy seems to be saying to employees is that they should be customer obsessed and work hard for the holiday season but he cannot guarantee they will still have their job in Q1. That sucks. My heart goes out to everyone who is and will be impacted.

makestuff 4y ago
Yeah basically going to make everyone work hard over peak to try and keep their jobs then start the cuts in January. The cuts will probably be whatever the delta is between the missed revenue from q4 and what wall street estimated.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  > The cuts will probably be whatever the delta is between the missed revenue from q4 and what wall street estimated This is backward looking. The right thing to do is look at your forecasts of the future and adjust according to those (because the past is in the past and is unchangeable).
bogota 4y ago
At the end of the day all that really matters is the comp package.
echelon 4y ago
If a layoff isn't an attempt [1] to get rid of under-performing talent or dump under-performing business divisions, then I've always felt that across the board pay adjustments are a much more ethical approach. I'd be much more inclined to stay at a company that lowered my pay 20% than a company that laid off my coworkers. Not letting people go shows empathy, and uniform pay decreases align everyone's interests in getting back to a good state. I could see why some might jump ship from a poorly performing company during ordinary economic times, but during this down tech cycle, the grass isn't necessarily greener. Going elsewhere might be difficult or put your head back on the chopping block. [1] Or as some might view it, an opportunity.

jvanderbot 4y ago

Amazon has a bunch of internal openings and hiring waivers -- for the profit centers. I think most of the layoffs will be belt tightening. Including my entire org.

fred_is_fred 4y ago

If your goal is to cut costs and you have no net reduction in HC - then you've failed. What did you want them to do - besides not wanting them to cut costs. It's an even worse look to get rid of 20k people and have 25k openings after.

jethro_tell 4y ago
Maybe you have features that can be built somewhere like aws where you have already sold it to a customer and you just don't have the devs. And you know you're going to cut from a part of the company where there is no expectation that the features from the devs will increase revenue. Tuning up the Alexa weather app isn't likely to get more customers but and aws database offering that some other fortune 500 is asking for might be revenue positive a couple months after release. There more to it than the total cost of devs it matters what people are working on and if the products will produce revenue.
- fred_is_fred 4y ago
  And they did that math and decided to reduce costs. They are not running a charity for wayward coders over there.
  - jethro_tell 4y ago
    I understand that, they had like 40k job openings a little while ago, and they are cutting 10k so my guess is that plenty get re-aligned and some don't.