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Tech Layoffs Keep Coming. Why Is Head Count Barely Budging?
- AlotOfReading 3y agoHeadcount isn't going down because the layoffs aren't principaled actions to "right-size" companies, but rather convenient buttons pushed to make numbers look better. The underlying causes of headcount growth are never meaningfully addressed afterwards, so any losses are quickly grown back after a token hiring freeze.
- deprecative 3y agoPump the numbers and hire new scrubs in the next quarter for less than what the previous person was making. Do it industry wide and you reset baseline pay which drives profit up further.
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- rhapsodic 3y ago[dead]
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- anacrolix 3y agopaywall?
- artninja1988 3y agohttps://archive.is/Hpzme https://archive.is/Hpzme
- 15457345234 3y agoWould genuinely like to know what additional value Amazon is getting from hiring nearly, what, 900k people since 2018? I mean, seriously, what do they all do? I can't fathom onboarding that many people in that space of time and integrating them into an employment structure in any reasonable way. It seems like 75% of your existing workforce would have to be dedicated to onboarding and training. How are you seriously bringing that many people onboard and having them genuinely contribute?
- riku_iki 3y agoIts mostly likely storage/logistics workers. Their shipping volume likely significantly increased since 2018, which is reflected in revenue numbers.
- spondylosaurus 3y agoAmazon is also infamous for high turnover rates. I doubt even a quarter of those 900k still work there.
- riku_iki 3y agobase on their 10q/k it looks like they increased headcount including turnover by that number
- euroderf 3y agoTheir median stay is less than a year, isn't it ?
- 15457345234 3y agoThe figures quoted revolve around the size of the company _today_ - so even if only one quarter of that 900k stayed, that means they onboarded even to make up for whomever left.
- treffer 3y agoAs others have pointed out: logistics. E.g. the German postal service employs some 600k people. DHL is another 600k. The logistics union has like 1.3M members. That's like 2% of all employees in Germany. Those are labor intensive jobs. With minimal training. It's a huge sector that you usually don't see (well, except for all that truck traffic).
- 15457345234 3y agoThey haven't pointed anything out, they just guessed. I want to _actually know_ what those people are doing.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agoNo Javascript: https://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?d=4966224846734&w=kl1SG9vCCnN-quashGDcsojsosyjck8q https://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?d=4966224846734&w=kl1SG9vCCn...
- Rebelgecko 3y agoDon't have access to the full article, but off shoring seems like a big factor. Lot of laid off teams are being reconstituted in LCOL countries like Romania and India
- jordanb 3y agoYep this is it. Of course during the first RTO push I repeatedly told all my colleagues that the natural evolution in the minds of leadership is going to be "if their job can be done from Lake Tahoe it can be done from Bangalore." Now our company is implementing a McKinsey designed plan to move the bulk of our employment to India. The expectation is that headcount will go up but with much cheaper resources. McKinsey insists that they've done this a bunch of times with different companies and it's gone swell.
- alephnerd 3y ago> "if their job can be done from Lake Tahoe it can be done from Bangalore." Yep! I explicitly warned about this happening on HN multiple times during that time period because I myself have done this for employers, but no one listened and downvoted me. I'm getting great schacenfreude.
- jondwillis 3y agoReplaced in-house engineering with off-shore? Personally, I can’t imagine feeling okay doing that, let alone schadenfreude… why?
- salawat 3y agoManagement types have selection pressures that favor specifically selecting for an ability to dehumanize. This is not necessarily coupled with any great excess of foresight.
- alephnerd 3y agoIt's still in-house engineering, but now now it's abroad. And schacenfrude for warning this exact thing would happen due to RTO
- seatac76 3y agoA lot of this is also to right size the inflated compensation given out in 2022-2023. My company(US based) has been stack ranking aggressively to manage people out but we have 2x the headcount available to hire this year. They are trying to uplevel the force in their own words, I don’t think it’s good for existing employee morale though.