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Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned
- robofanatic 4y agoIts a cycle. Everything that goes up has to come down a little to go up again.
- rr808 4y agoAWS guys laid off today according to posts on blind.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- raincom 4y agohttps://archive.is/Srynp https://archive.is/Srynp
- monero-xmr 4y agoHow is Google avoiding any layoffs? I know their structure is such that stockholders supposedly can’t force any changes, but it’s hard to justify being the only company without any cuts. Their stock is falling and they still have a single cash cow for over 80% of their revenue despite over a decade of attempts to diversify.
- lvl102 4y agoI don’t think they’re stretched too wide. I suppose that’s the benefit of constantly shutting down projects.
- justahuman74 4y agoThere is nothing to justify though. Stock prices are external opinions based on market factors, and other companies making staff cuts is their own problem. If the voting majority of the google board is happy with the revenue/profit/growth/staff then why would they cut
- lmm 4y agoWhy would the board be happy? Do they think they know something the market doesn't?
- EFreethought 4y agoWell, if they understand the concept of "business cycle", then yes, they do.
- lmm 4y agoSurely the market should understand that equally well.
- debatem1 4y agoThey're going to. The new performance process is clearly teeing people up to get the axe. They'll just say it's part of their new process rather than a layoff.
- germanjoey 4y agoWhat's the new performance process?
- 4y ago
- wdb 4y agoAre there enough companies that can afford all the tens of thousands of fired workers SV salaries if all these big companies are firing them?
- jvanderbot 4y agoAmazon did a lot of stuff. Most of the engineers weren't really fungible, they were more specialized. The robotics project set was really hard hit, and frankly that's good for the industry as now there's more talent floating around. Robotics has been super dry for a long time.
- jjcon 4y agoMost of the tech companies are letting a mix of recent hires, corporate middle management and in amazon’s case some logistics warehouse workers and specialty project engineers were let go. It’s a pretty eclectic, diverse group of people so its not as hard as it sounds to reabsorb into other companies. If they were all engineers or all HR there might be issues but in an already over-employed economy already 17k jobs won’t even make a dent in just about any sector right now.
- bushbaba 4y agoI disagree there’s simply not enough FANG level high paying jobs to fill all these employees into. Many will end up at startups and other industries with a paycut. Few companies are willing to pay a HR or Recruiter 300k/year comp.
- operatingthetan 4y ago>Few companies are willing to pay a HR or Recruiter 300k/year comp. Amazon wasn't doing that.
- preordained 4y agoI don't understand why you were downvoted. Maybe not optimistic/cheery, sure, but not an outlandish take at all I'd say.
- 4y ago
- jvanderbot 4y agoI just wanted to point out that probably 2000 of us (in robotics/AI) were "laid off" in Q4, but were paid through the end of the calendar year "To find an internal position". Almost none did, and I don't think that was really the intent, but what do I know. They're in this batch. I expect a Q2 announcement of all those people who in Q1 were "transitioning to new positions" that were eliminated before they could move.
- discodave 4y agoSounds like Amazon. Back in the day they managed to avoid 'layoffs' by transferring thousands of people from Fire Phone -> Alexa. They somehow avoided layoffs from shutting down Prime Air (drones, not 767s), even though that had a lot of employees. They're pretty good at getting people to leave without doing 'layoffs'. Heck, if you believe that they've always had 5-10% 'unregretted attrition' targets, which I do, and apply it to the whole company, that's 50-100k employees per year!
- jasonpeacock 4y agoPrime Air was not shut down: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/team/prime-air https://www.amazon.jobs/en/team/prime-air
- jjallen 4y agoThere are zero openings. How does this prove it’s not shutdown?
- AlotOfReading 4y agoThey also had 30% turnover in 2021 and 20% the year before according to [1]. I can't imagine how miserable it must be there to generate those numbers. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220506053517/https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-prime-air-attrition-drone-delivery-employee-turnover-2021-2022-5 https://web.archive.org/web/20220506053517/https://www.busin...
- johncessna 4y agoI'm not following the article. It makes a point of distinguishing between 'corporate workers' and warehouse/delivery/logistics/etc folks. Then it claims the reason for this rif is because they expanded to meet the demands of the pandemic, most of which would be in the warehouse sector, and now that that demand is gone, they need to reduce the workforce. If so, why are they reducing the corporate workers?
- __derek__ 4y agoThe last paragraph makes the connection: > When demand started to wane with customers moving back to shopping in stores, Amazon initiated a broad cost-cutting review to pare back on units that were unprofitable Waning demand triggered cost-cutting, which focused on unprofitable orgs.
- Retric 4y agoEvery thousand warehouse/delivery workers you add requires several office workers for HR etc. So, the separation isn’t completely clean.
- johncessna 4y agoYeah, fair. They mention recruiters specifically by name. Some of that could also fall into the retail operations bucket as well.
- TheCoelacanth 4y agoPlus the warehouse has insane voluntary turnover, so they can reduce pretty quickly just by slowing down hiring, while the corporate jobs are a bit cushier and need to actually be let go.
- raziel2701 4y agoIt's crazy that AMZN announces this and the stock goes up in after hours trading. People are losing their livelihoods yet rich people only care about the potential higher profits. This is very disconnected from reality, amzn needs consumers to buy their products. If layoffs keep piling up higher and deeper something is going to break and hello recession!
- unity1001 4y agoYou just summarized entire das Kapital...
- asah 4y agoAMZN stock is held by millions of people, not just "rich"
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- adoxyz 4y agoLaying people off reduces one of the biggest costs to an organization, thus making it more profitable (even if in the short term), thus the stock price rises. Stocks are always forward looking and investors believe that by cutting down costs and re-focusing will make amazon worth more in the future.
- asdff 4y agoHow can a company be more profitable with less workers if the workers are the source of the profits?
- 8note 4y agoThe workers aren't the source of profits in all cases. Eg, a musician is a worker, but once they've written a song that you now iwn, you can sell infinite licenses to it, regardless of whether the musician is still being paid
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- greatpostman 4y agoThe funny thing is like 8 months ago amazon was hiring engineers with 4 years of experience for 350-400k. These people aren’t even good programmers. And now they need to cut.
- nfRfqX5n 4y agoIf they can make L5/6 to get that salary then they're probably pretty good actually
- m00x 4y agoYou can make it to L5/6 without being a good engineer. I interviewed several Uber/Amazon engineers and they couldn't solve a simple problem (very easy problem that most bootcamp grads could do). A lot of them get there by being interviewed by other bad engineers, and just float when the market is strong, or use politics to get in a good position. A guy at my company just merges library upgrade PRs blindly. That's all he does. He fought getting dependabot up on Github, but he finally conceded. He hasn't done a commit since. I've reported it to management, but I was told it wasn't our team's responsibility. There are tons of dark corners to hide in at big companies.
- laidoffamazon 4y agoWhich companies do have good mid level engineers then, if you believe L5's at Amazon are stupid?
- LudwigNagasena 4y agoHe didn’t say that L5’s at Amazon are stupid. He said that there are lots of L5’s at Amazon who are bad engineers. It doesn’t even have to be a majority rather than a noticeable minority.
- laidoffamazon 4y agoEh, it's a big enough minority that it paints all of us (as someone that used to be an Amazon L5 who constantly received microaggressions from others for being "stupid" because I worked at Amazon) poorly.
- faangiq 4y agoTry multiplying by 10 if you want to get serious Andy …
- laidoffamazon 4y agoIn ~2020 there were about ~67k software engineers at Amazon (aka had access to the source-control posix group), so unless you don't want Amazon to exist anymore I don't think that's plausible.
- metaphor 4y agoIrrelevant and certainly plausible. Quoting the last 10-K filing[1]: > As of December 31, 2021, we employed approximately 1,608,000 full-time and part-time employees. Additionally, we use independent contractors and temporary personnel to supplement our workforce. It's really not difficult to imagine how ~1 in 10 can be chopped while still surviving. [1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872422000005/amzn-20211231.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872422...
- xboxnolifes 4y agoAmazon has over 300,000 corporate employees. It's not just software engineers getting laid off.
- laidoffamazon 4y agoI mean, then it's more than half of corporate employees. I don't think that's particularly feasible either.
- VincentEvans 4y agoHere’s a thought that has been percolating in my mind for a bit since these “market adjustments” began a month or two back. Somehow at some point, in what perhaps could be blamed on the ever-hated mass produced MBAs - companies got really comfortable with the “it’s not personal, it’s just good business” of letting go of their employees for a slightest reason, or sometimes for no reason at all - just to make it look to their investors like they got their shit together. We are seeing a bit of a market downturn - but it hasn’t hit Amazon pocketbook now, has it? Are they in danger of running out of money? What happened to “people are our most important resource”? And this brings me to my main point - I think years of this has had an unexpected side-effect the companies never signed up for: people started treating companies they way companies treating people and we are starting to see the results - quiet quitting, oft bemoaned lack of loyalty, job hopping, etc. Now I am not saying it’s all new, but at least in my observation it’s peaking now and my thesis is these things are connected.
- smrtinsert 4y agoSoftware unions are starting to seem inevitable.
- eqmvii 4y agoCompanies are in the business of predicting the market in a quarter, a year, 5 years, etc. They got it wrong and overhired. There's ample evidence of that, and of cooling demand - now and in the future.
- phpisthebest 4y agoThey got sucked into the "new normal" that never was, and was never going to be. We are seeing a massive return to the old normal, which means people are going back to offices (not WFH) people are going back to shopping in person not online, people are going back to eating in restaurants not using Grub Hub or ordering online. etc etc etc
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y agoI think you are wrong. Not completely, but I think you missed the massive change in attitudes that took place the past few years. WFH is likely going to stay in some shape or form since it is clear it can work ( and heavens know emplopyers full remote positions have their pick of qualified candidates ) and likely some RTO will follow ( with another round of - likely muted due to recession - resignations ), but I would hesitate to conclude that good old days are here again. I am not going back.
- zmgsabst 4y ago[flagged]
- laidoffamazon 4y agoI guess this is a new target for the anti-woke axe grinding - corporate CFO's. Never thought I'd see it honestly. I think it's an interesting synthesis of the corporate-skeptical populist ideology with the non-white skeptical racialist ideology, so I guess we should be expecting far more of this in the next two years. Thankfully, I think most people this is just kinda weird culture war BS.
- zmgsabst 4y agoI understand you’re trying to dismiss a CFO sponsoring the murder of Antonio Mays Jr and working to rebuild systemic racism with name calling. I think that shows a lack of morals on your part.
- laidoffamazon 4y agoNo, like most people I think your hangups are just really weird. I guess it'll take until November 2024 for that to sink in for you.
- zmgsabst 4y agoI understand you find Brian O’s racism and funding of terrorists who shoot black kids to be normal — even something that you’re proud of. And that you find it strange people would object to that. I think you’ll be surprised that outside your bubble, most Americans don’t support CFOs funding terrorists that murder children. Again, I think this points to a clear lack of morals from you.
- laidoffamazon 4y agoNobody knows what you're talking about!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago"Amazon had about $35 billion in cash and cash equivalents and long-term debt of about $59 billion at the end of the third quarter ended Sept. 30." https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/amazon-secures-8-billion-loan-2023-01-03/ https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/amazon-secu...
- CoastalCoder 4y agoI'm not in finance, but I suspect the rates of return on the cash and the debt are quite relevant.
- __derek__ 4y agoIt's fair that you edited out the confused commentary, but I'll leave this note that cash is an immediate/near-term asset and long-term debt is a long-term liability. Duration mismatch is important for a company that attempts to maximize free cash-flow.
- nonethewiser 4y agoWhat do you think people should be taking from this?
- snake_doc 4y agoYesterday Jan 3, Amazon borrowed another $8B at 0.75% plus SOFR (which is basically Fed Funds rate at ~4.3%) through a short term credit facility. Also, Amazon has ~$69B in long term lease liabilities. That’s about ~3x the combined long term lease liabilities of Walmart and Costco (~$20B combined). Walmart and Costco are the world’s #1 and #3 retailer, Amazon being #2. From the beginning when Jassy took the job, the problem has always been the cost of the excess warehouse capacity. Once they realized the true demand from this holiday season, they can now rightsize capacity for 2024 and beyond. Until then, they need to tighten the belt. Just like if you realized you swallowed a bigger mortgage than you can handle. “The last issue relates to our fixed cost leverage. Despite still seeing strong customer demand and expansion of our FBA business, we currently have excess capacity in our fulfillment and transportation network. Capacity decisions are made years in advance, and we made conscious decisions in 2020 and early 2021 to not let space be a constraint on our business.” - Brian Olsavsky CFO Apr 28, 2022 earnings call
- newaccount2021 4y ago[dead]
- ausbah 4y agoI'm a new grad in Seattle, most of my tech friends are at Amazon. I hope they keep their positions.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- swellguy 4y agoThe fed generated money like Germany in WW2. Unfortunately people at tech companies don't understand the so called laws of supply and demand and just hired people with no logical thinking at all.
- vore 4y agoI don't think that's a fair assessment. The root reason is a lot of tech companies believed that the growth in users from the pandemic would be more sustainable ("buying the dip", as it were): after all heads you win, tails you have to lay off 17,000 people. This is, of course, the tails side of this.
- WhiteBlueSkies 4y agoBased on what evidence do you suggest that they hired people with "no logical thinking". You are part of the problem. I'm sick and tired of engineers being ultra skeptical about the skills of other engineers. It leads to constant peacocking. In the teach world, if you didn't blog about it you don't know it.
- Aperocky 4y agoLooks like they understood it and operated exactly according to supply and demand. If the Feds did not raise interest, I doubt any of this would have happened, inflation might cross 10% though.
- anonreeeeplor 4y agoI have interviewed with Amazon several times. Every time I don’t make it through because I realized the people in many of the roles were (a) not the best people (b) I seemed to know way more than many of them about their domain (c) they kept trying to offer me horizontal transfer (d) they wanted to pay me less than I know I am worth. My impression is Amazon is a factory tuned to hire and churn a sort of middle of the road white collar worker with no creativity who can sort of plug into some pre designed module and churn away and be yelled at to “go faster.” Some of the people I met at Amazon we’re ultra talented but all the ones I ever interviewed with seemed like total morons. I never understood why. Maybe I just interviewed with the wrong teams
- dboreham 4y agoI haven't worked there, but I got the impression going back decades that Amazon is a terrible place to work. That said, I have a friend who worked there and had really only positive things to say. And he quit the valley startup where we both worked when things became rocky there, and went back to a different job at Amazon. So YMMV it seems.
- midoridensha 4y ago>I haven't worked there, but I got the impression going back decades that Amazon is a terrible place to work. That said, I have a friend who worked there and had really only positive things to say. I've heard the same thing about them. I think it's a place where certain kinds of people like to work, for a while, because it pays well and looks great on a resume, and they don't mind working long hours to do that kind of work and earn that kind of pay. But it's not for everyone.
- Firmwarrior 4y agoWhen I worked there, it was a hell of a lot less stressful than the startups I'd worked for before that, where the company was always just a couple of months away from disaster. Once I picked up Financial Independence habits, my life was a breeze (even though the job itself was a techno-bureaucratic nightmare straight out of a Dilbert strip)
- squokko 4y agoEmployers and employees now treat each other like card sharks treat each other: assumed worthless scumbags, to be exploited to whatever extent possible, and treated nicely only as an investment in future extraction.
- gnicholas 4y ago> He added that the majority of the cuts are on the retail and recruiting areas of Amazon. How large would their recruiting organization be, and what percent do companies cut when they foresee that they won't need to proactively recruit for a couple years (because there will be enough job seekers who will apply to listed positions). I assume they'll still need people to process candidates, but that won't be as many as when they were reaching out to people and trying to woo them. What does retail mean? Is this a reference to Alexa? Or is this about their storefront operations?
- Sparkyte 4y agoSome of their product teams are massive and they don't need to be. Some product teams are so large it just adds too much feature creep putting development teams into development hell. One of the various reasons I left Amazon.
- sparrc 4y agoAt Amazon practically everything that’s not AWS falls under “retail”. Including things like prime video and alexa.
- qqtt 4y agoThat kind of depends on what exactly you are talking about. From a financial statement perspective, Amazon chooses to only disclose revenue from AWS separately from the rest of the business. That's more to do with reporting regulations regarding what needs to be reported once those earnings reach a certain threshold of the entire business - which AWS passed (previously to this threshold being reached, they did not even separate AWS in their earnings reports). Internally, Amazon structures their teams into divisions. There is a retail division, and part of that division works on Alexa (mainly, the shopping skills and shopping experience, trying to make shopping on Amazon with Alexa as easy as possible) - but the main Alexa organization is not under "retail" at Amazon, which includes the actual device development, hardware teams, ML related to voice processing, etc. Same story with Prime Video.
- mahidol 4y agoThis is worrisome - joined Amazon ~4 months ago because it seemed like the most sensible thing to do considering my immigration status. Have one last attempt left at the H-1B lottery; PERM is underway but no hopes of getting it finished before STEM OPT runs out. Was thinking of getting married to my girlfriend soon, but not too sure about that anymore (she's in the 3rd year of her PhD so she cannot really move with me) if I'm going to get axed considering the job market isn't the best either. Not hyped about the prospect of moving to my home country since I have not lived there since I was 9. F*k, life just hasn't been kind these last couple years.
- ferdowsi 4y agoHow did you go from 9 to working age without getting residency in the US or another country?
- sbierwagen 4y agoTPS visa maybe.
- mahidol 4y agomy parents' GC didn't go through until well after I turned 21.
- quasarj 4y agoFirst experience with the US immigration process, eh?
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y agoFWIW, it does not seem like an uncommon reaction. My wife had a similar questions bordering on disbelief, when I was giving her a glimpse of current US immigration system based on my experience alone.
- bobthepanda 4y agoThe way the current immigration system works is not taught at all in schools. Maybe if you’re lucky you get taught about the Ellis Island days where all you had to do was prove you had enough money not to starve and not have any signs of infectious disease like tuberculosis.
- maskil 4y agoNo company deserves loyalty, but 2+ months severance at a tech salary isn't a tragedy. I wouldn't mind getting laid off at some of the companies
- Def_Os 4y agoWith industry-wide layoffs, are you really that confident you can find a new job? The hiring process is already a crapshoot, and now you have much more competition.
- my_city 4y agoSoftware workers, we have to unionize. We have way more power together than isolated.
- pessimizer 4y agoAlso, 17,000 workers that know each other and have their own networks could start an Amazon competitor (or anything else.)
- black_13 4y ago[dead]
- shaburn 4y agoThe capital markets rewarded growth companies that were hiring in a zero interest rate environment and will reward them for firing as cost of capital increases, slowing growth. That which the market giveth, the market will taketh away.
- charcircuit 4y agoHow does laying off people help Amazon be the "Earth's Best Employer"?
- gnarbarian 4y agoblood for the blood god. It's not good for the soul to work for somebody who doesn't appreciate your contributions. The Amazon refugees with talent and ability will find work, hopefully with places that will cherish them. Those without talent and ability can use this kick in the pants as a wake up call to sort their shit out. I am also looking for a new job. competition makes me thrive and I welcome the challenge to compete with the best. I'll see you on the battlefield
- johnohara 4y agoBack in 2008, a woman I was dating worked for a subsidiary of PepsiCo and was laid off by Indra Nooyi's decision to create "financial breathing room" in response to the economic storm clouds that were gathering. The Financial Times described it as "just 1.7% of the group's global workforce." Meh. 1.7% Because of the economic collapse of 2008-2009, she didn't find another position for well over a year and a half, damn near lost her home, and had to draw very deep from the well. Nooyi's characterization has stayed with me ever since as a metaphor for just how cold the wind blows in those meetings.
- hgsgm 4y agoWhat's the point of this story? That your government is failing at social welfare so people are relying on PepsiCo for charity?
- johnohara 4y agoNo. That real decisions affect real lives and have real effects. I do not subscribe to the idea that employees are an accounting problem either.
- throwawayatr 4y agoYou should start a business and grant permanent jobs. Low interest rates created a lot of bullshit jobs in the first place. You have a problem with those jobs taken away but not people loosing savings bcz of interest rates lower than inflation.
- verst 4y agoThe article's title currently reads "over 18,000" - can we get this updated please?
- zzz345345 4y agoDang.... since the title didn't create enough outrage, wsj changed it to "more than 18,000 workers" I think that the title should be updated per the rules of this community
- ProllyInfamous 4y agoIn October, after mentioning to the neighbor plumber friend that massive tech layoffs would be arriving just in time for Christmas, he told me that he did not really care what happens to tech workers because "people will always need a good plumber." Tonight, same plumber friend told me that his company's workflow has gone from ~50 hrs/wk to 30hrs/wk — and that includes "organizing the company truck." He now understands why everybody should care about (even unrelated-) industry-wide layoffs.
- oars 4y agoFascinating. I assume you and your plumber friend live in an area dominated by tech jobs? E.g. Seattle?
- ProllyInfamous 4y agoI live on one of Chattanooga's wealthier mountaintops; most of my neighbors are retired small business owners. Any neighbors my age [late 30s] are WFH techies. I myself rent (because of a unique arrangement) for about half of what a mortgage would be. There are a few crappier houses up here, with a few blue collars left (I am a trained electrician, IBEW).
- ahkurtz 4y agoA lot of words to say: "cutting short term spend to bolster the stock price for investors who are worried about the USD peg"
- baner2022 4y agoI am sort of surprised that FAANG / MAanG companies are laying off … didn’t they hire the best with multiple rounds of interviews… how did they go so wrong …. Yet they permeat this paradigm of interview similar to the feudal days when a jester out of a thousand applicants gets the court appointment as they were no other jobs in the land . Would someone be brave to share if folks built systems without knowledge of data structures and algo that delivered value but after hiring experts the companies were shedding market share … eh!
- sacnoradhq 4y ago5%. Amazon is enormous. A well-placed source mentioned AWS is marginally/unaffected. For the past 3 years, megacorps have been hiring like money was free and OpEx doesn't matter. The danger in downturns is over-contracting and destroying current and future capabilities.
- okokwhatever 4y agoMillenials and GenZ discovering cynicism. Such a great moment to be alive.
- wildrhythms 4y agoIncreasingly I get the impression that those groups have long held such cynicisms (find an endless stream #genz #wfh on Tiktok), and it's the much older 30 and 40-somethings that are trumpeting the corporate kum ba yah.
- amyamyamy2 4y agoAnecdotally I definitely agree with you -- I'm Gen Z and most of my SWE friends from outside of work have very similar perspectives. Don't think anybody actually cares about their job beyond the money. Even some of my more passionate friends from school have developed a lot of cynicism after companies they loved rescinded their full time offers
- d4rkp4ttern 4y agoI have one word to partially explain this: Costco Or to elaborate: Recession => price sensitivity => costco Until a few months ago my first impulse was to just order everything from Amazon. Now instead my first impulse is to see if it’s available at Costco, and if it is, it’s likely to be at a significantly lower unit cost.
- Booleans 4y agoAnd you can feel better about shopping at Costco since they actually pay/treat their employees well.
- abvdasker 4y agoThere's a lot of speculation that the Alexa orgs are going to be decimated by this round of layoffs. I genuinely have no idea how Alexa could be losing Amazon $10 billion every year.