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I don't recall a similar story when Amazon went through their first major layoffs in 2022 (which heavily hit their office on the same street as the Google Cambr

I don't recall a similar story when Amazon went through their first major layoffs in 2022 (which heavily hit their office on the same street as the Google Cambridge office mentioned in the first sentence), but I do recall stories about Google's layoffs including glossy photos of ex-Googlers and members of the Alphabet Workers Union. None when my current company did layoffs last year. At what point do non-Googlers matter enough to get a New York Times article?

verteu 3y ago
I'd guess it's because Amazon doesn't have a reputation as a happy place to work.
- laidoffamazon 3y ago
  Perhaps, but neither does Facebook and I’ve seen reporting about their layoffs that’s similar. I think it’s because Amazon engineers are seen as lesser/lower class. The people that write for the NYT know their classmates from Yale and Penn that work in non tech and tech roles at Google, but they don’t know any UTenn grads that work at Amazon as SDE3s. Thus, they’re seen as people that don’t matter.
  - Jensson 3y ago
    Facebook copies Googles culture, except the hard to fire part. Facebook do fire people much more than Google does, so there everyone already lived under fear of getting fired. At Google very few feared getting fired, I remember the big outcry because a guy was fired after having stayed for 10 years at a level where Google expected him to get promoted, so it took a decade of being far below mediocre to get fired, not something to worry about for most people since most people will get promoted to the expected levels or leave on their own long before they would get fired. But after that outcry they did reduce the expected level to where basically nobody would get fired unless they were absolutely incompetent, so there really never were any significant amount of people getting fired for being mediocre.

verteu 3y ago

I'd guess it's because Amazon doesn't have a reputation as a happy place to work.

laidoffamazon 3y ago
Perhaps, but neither does Facebook and I’ve seen reporting about their layoffs that’s similar. I think it’s because Amazon engineers are seen as lesser/lower class. The people that write for the NYT know their classmates from Yale and Penn that work in non tech and tech roles at Google, but they don’t know any UTenn grads that work at Amazon as SDE3s. Thus, they’re seen as people that don’t matter.
- Jensson 3y ago
  Facebook copies Googles culture, except the hard to fire part. Facebook do fire people much more than Google does, so there everyone already lived under fear of getting fired. At Google very few feared getting fired, I remember the big outcry because a guy was fired after having stayed for 10 years at a level where Google expected him to get promoted, so it took a decade of being far below mediocre to get fired, not something to worry about for most people since most people will get promoted to the expected levels or leave on their own long before they would get fired. But after that outcry they did reduce the expected level to where basically nobody would get fired unless they were absolutely incompetent, so there really never were any significant amount of people getting fired for being mediocre.