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Amazon’s hardware teams first to face axe as tech giant downsizes

12 points by firstSpeaker 4y ago

KingLancelot 4y ago
[dead]
alexb_ 4y ago
https://archive.ph/tY0bD https://archive.ph/tY0bD
alexb_ 4y ago
>In a memo to staff, Jassy suggested even sacred cows, such as the online store, could be hit in the coming months. Already, a hiring freeze is in place across the entire company. By far the most shocking thing in this article. Amazon's online store has been getting worse and worse in quality, to the point where I've largely stopped using it if I can get things anywhere else. From my perspective, the competition from WalMart is especially big - WalMart+, the guarantee of actual quality products, and the 1 day delivery that comes with it has been worth much more to me than Amazon Prime. For more niche things, I can buy direct online. So Amazon might lose out on a lot of market share if things keep going the way they are going. I have to wonder what the long term effect of cutting back on online store employment is; will Amazon become the new Wish? Brick and mortar retailers aren't strangers to completely losing out on gigantic amounts of market share due to not keeping up (see KMart), who's to say this doesn't also apply to online retailers?
- rhaway84773 4y ago
  My understanding is that Amazon’s online store has become less of a store and more of an advertisement. Amazon has been optimizing profits, and it appears what they’ve realized is that the less they do the more they profit. So they went from selling goods -> charging others to sell goods to you -> basically charging others to market that they have goods to sell
musk_micropenis 4y ago
> In his memo, which Amazon later posted on its corporate blog, Jassy set the scene for more sweeping dismissals in the remainder of this year and into the next. “Our annual planning process extends into the new year, which means there will be more role reductions as leaders continue to make adjustments,” he wrote. “Those decisions will be shared with impacted employees and organisations early in 2023.” That's a long time to have a sword dangling over your head. These employees are going to be under tremendous stress for at least a couple of months.
- fatnoah 4y ago
  That's roughly how my previous company did things. A layoff in June, followed by an announcement in early August that a much larger layoff would happen in late September that would hit Engineering particularly hard (something like 40% as it turned out). It wasn't a very productive 12 weeks for anyone, despite senior leadership attempting to go on as normal.
- sorokod 4y ago
  Not terribly important in the greater scheme of things but "impacted imployees"?
  - __derek__ 4y ago
    It's more fun if you use the medical senses of the word 'impacted' to parse layoff announcements.
bogomipz 4y ago
There were a couple of things that stood out for me in this: >"The move seeks to satisfy investor demands for greater profitability at the company, which has seen its capitalisation fall from $1.8tn a year ago to $940bn today" I guess the trillion dollar market cap is the new standard bearer for big tech?[1] How sustainable is this? This was not even a thing a few years ago. Now slipping slightly below that after a historic pandemic growth bump is cause for alarm and massive job cuts? The article further states: >"Still, overall revenue growth, including cloud, had fallen this year to as low as 7.3 and 7.2 per cent in the first two quarters, its lowest rate for more than two decades." Note it didn't fall by 7.3% it only grew by 7.3% over the previous quarter of almost the same increase? How is that not respectable? Am I missing something? [1] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/shrinking-trillion-dollar-market-cap-club/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/shrinking-trillion-dollar-m...

12 points by firstSpeaker 4y ago

KingLancelot 4y ago

[dead]

alexb_ 4y ago

https://archive.ph/tY0bD https://archive.ph/tY0bD

alexb_ 4y ago

>In a memo to staff, Jassy suggested even sacred cows, such as the online store, could be hit in the coming months. Already, a hiring freeze is in place across the entire company. By far the most shocking thing in this article. Amazon's online store has been getting worse and worse in quality, to the point where I've largely stopped using it if I can get things anywhere else. From my perspective, the competition from WalMart is especially big - WalMart+, the guarantee of actual quality products, and the 1 day delivery that comes with it has been worth much more to me than Amazon Prime. For more niche things, I can buy direct online. So Amazon might lose out on a lot of market share if things keep going the way they are going. I have to wonder what the long term effect of cutting back on online store employment is; will Amazon become the new Wish? Brick and mortar retailers aren't strangers to completely losing out on gigantic amounts of market share due to not keeping up (see KMart), who's to say this doesn't also apply to online retailers?

rhaway84773 4y ago
My understanding is that Amazon’s online store has become less of a store and more of an advertisement. Amazon has been optimizing profits, and it appears what they’ve realized is that the less they do the more they profit. So they went from selling goods -> charging others to sell goods to you -> basically charging others to market that they have goods to sell

musk_micropenis 4y ago

> In his memo, which Amazon later posted on its corporate blog, Jassy set the scene for more sweeping dismissals in the remainder of this year and into the next. “Our annual planning process extends into the new year, which means there will be more role reductions as leaders continue to make adjustments,” he wrote. “Those decisions will be shared with impacted employees and organisations early in 2023.” That's a long time to have a sword dangling over your head. These employees are going to be under tremendous stress for at least a couple of months.

fatnoah 4y ago
That's roughly how my previous company did things. A layoff in June, followed by an announcement in early August that a much larger layoff would happen in late September that would hit Engineering particularly hard (something like 40% as it turned out). It wasn't a very productive 12 weeks for anyone, despite senior leadership attempting to go on as normal.
sorokod 4y ago
Not terribly important in the greater scheme of things but "impacted imployees"?
- __derek__ 4y ago
  It's more fun if you use the medical senses of the word 'impacted' to parse layoff announcements.

bogomipz 4y ago

There were a couple of things that stood out for me in this: >"The move seeks to satisfy investor demands for greater profitability at the company, which has seen its capitalisation fall from $1.8tn a year ago to $940bn today" I guess the trillion dollar market cap is the new standard bearer for big tech?[1] How sustainable is this? This was not even a thing a few years ago. Now slipping slightly below that after a historic pandemic growth bump is cause for alarm and massive job cuts? The article further states: >"Still, overall revenue growth, including cloud, had fallen this year to as low as 7.3 and 7.2 per cent in the first two quarters, its lowest rate for more than two decades." Note it didn't fall by 7.3% it only grew by 7.3% over the previous quarter of almost the same increase? How is that not respectable? Am I missing something? [1] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/shrinking-trillion-dollar-market-cap-club/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/shrinking-trillion-dollar-m...