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Three months from now - Amazon hiring 50k new corporate workers. Constant churn is simply the new big tech strategy to keep employees on their toes. Plus it le

by paxys 1y ago

Three months from now - Amazon hiring 50k new corporate workers. Constant churn is simply the new big tech strategy to keep employees on their toes. Plus it lets them wipe away future RSU comp that was granted to employees when stock prices were way lower.

al_borland 1y ago
Looking at the people around me, people don’t do very good work when they are constantly on their toes. A lot of time is wasted on the rumor mill about the next round of layoffs, people are hesitant to invest in big (needed) changes and opt to just keep the lights on, and technical decisions are often colored by what will still work after person X if laid off (if they ever get laid off) vs picking the best option in front of them. The churn also continually re-opens process gaps, repeats the same projects over and over on a new stack, and other hamster wheel type activity that do nothing to move the business forward. It simply keeps people busy and frustrated while the leadership churn is used to pad their resumes with fancy sounding projects that never actually get completed, but it’s enough for them to leverage it into a new job with a big title.
butler533 1y ago
Meanwhile, 30k Amazon-minded individuals are unleashed on to other tech companies to evangelize Amazon products and services. The design of it all is really apparent.
- al_borland 1y ago
  Is this how it plays out, or does it backfire with the former employees being bitter about the layoff and not wanting to be free evangelists for the company didn’t show them any loyalty.
  - brazukadev 1y ago
    They might be bitter but evangelize Amazon products are their most marketable skills.
    - motorest 1y ago
      > They might be bitter but evangelize Amazon products are their most marketable skills. I think you are talking out of ignorance and spite. Most of the services used by Amazon employees are internal services that may or may not be on par with the state of the art. Apparently a big chunk of Amazon doesn't even use AWS at all, and instead use proto-cloud computer services that are a throwback from the 90s take on cloud computing.
      - sillyfluke 1y ago
        Amazon people often shitting on the internal messaging Chime app comes to mind.
      - al_borland 1y ago
        > Apparently a big chunk of Amazon doesn't even use AWS at all, and instead use proto-cloud computer services that are a throwback from the 90s take on cloud computing. Is there more information on this somewhere. I had leadership telling me and a few others that we needed to replicate something on-par with AWS for internal use (with about 10 devs and less than a year timeline). I thought this sounded crazy, and it would be interesting if Amazon themselves didn’t even have what was being asked of us.
        motorest 1y ago
        > Is there more information on this somewhere. Yes, everywhere. You just need to look for it. See the following link, which has references to Apollo and MAWS. https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/amazon-notable-systems/ https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/amazon-notable-systems/ > I thought this sounded crazy, and it would be interesting if Amazon themselves didn’t even have what was being asked of us. Amazon has multiple incantations of this. As legend would have it, AWS was an offshoot of Amazon's internal cloud infrastructure designed to monetize it to amortize their investment on bare metal infrastructure. They partitioned their networks for security reasons and for a few years their infrastructure evolved independently. Then AWS was a huge success and took a life of its own. Only relatively recently did Amazon started to push to drop their internal infrastructure to put all their eggs on AWS in general but serverless solutions in particular.
- seanmcdirmid 1y ago
  Ex-Amazonians aren't the best boosters of Amazon. What really happens is that everyone at other big-corps start complaining about new people managers and product/project managers coming in with a culture that is a bit more toxic than normal.
- elmerfud 1y ago
  Anyone who shows up and their only contribution is to push AWS services because that's what they know, the first question I asked them is if they are capable of doing it themselves on-prem. Their answer is no or they don't know how to or some babbling on about it's more expensive and ROI and things like that I dismiss them immediately. Because those may all be true things but without the ability to do it yourself it is impossible to make an accurate assessment if AWS or another cloud service is actually a good fit for what you're doing.
  - travelalberta 1y ago
    What I would give for my org to just buy an oxide rack and run everything license free on there. Shame the only people with access to our CIO are salesmen…
malfist 1y ago
lol, have you looked at our stock price lately? Flat YTD. And Jassy is terrible at earnings calls, he always spooks the investors. Firing people to make new new hire grants is more expensive
- master_crab 1y ago
  At what point does the board and Bezos start thinking Jassy is the problem?
  - malfist 1y ago
    Hopefully soon. He's big innovations as CEO have been betting everything on AI and RTO
    - cebert 1y ago
      That’s what most institutional investors seem to want
      - jalapenos 1y ago
        We need them in the office... but also to replace them with AI... All sounds like a sick fetish. I want to see them getting replaced - I want to see the look on their face and their archive box walk
        toomuchtodo 1y ago
        The fetish, if you can call it that in this context, is control.
  - lazystar 1y ago
    Even if they did, who would replace him? The risk of choosing someone that could end up making things even worse is pretty high.
  - ethbr1 1y ago
bigbadfeline 1y ago
> Three months from now - Amazon hiring 50k new corporate workers. Wanna bet? The 3-month balance of hired minus fired will be less than 20K. Those ballrooms don't pay for themselves [1]. Let's mark the calendar 01/27/26 [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-ballroom-donors-white-house-stand-to-gain/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-ballroom-donors-white-hou...
lamontcg 1y ago
> Constant churn is simply the new big tech strategy to keep employees on their toes. Amazon has been doing that since it was founded, certainly 2001-2006. Every year there would be stack ranking, and they'd get rid of employees and even entire departments in reorgs and layoffs.

by paxys 1y ago

al_borland 1y ago

Looking at the people around me, people don’t do very good work when they are constantly on their toes. A lot of time is wasted on the rumor mill about the next round of layoffs, people are hesitant to invest in big (needed) changes and opt to just keep the lights on, and technical decisions are often colored by what will still work after person X if laid off (if they ever get laid off) vs picking the best option in front of them. The churn also continually re-opens process gaps, repeats the same projects over and over on a new stack, and other hamster wheel type activity that do nothing to move the business forward. It simply keeps people busy and frustrated while the leadership churn is used to pad their resumes with fancy sounding projects that never actually get completed, but it’s enough for them to leverage it into a new job with a big title.

butler533 1y ago

Meanwhile, 30k Amazon-minded individuals are unleashed on to other tech companies to evangelize Amazon products and services. The design of it all is really apparent.

al_borland 1y ago
Is this how it plays out, or does it backfire with the former employees being bitter about the layoff and not wanting to be free evangelists for the company didn’t show them any loyalty.
- brazukadev 1y ago
  They might be bitter but evangelize Amazon products are their most marketable skills.
  - motorest 1y ago
    > They might be bitter but evangelize Amazon products are their most marketable skills. I think you are talking out of ignorance and spite. Most of the services used by Amazon employees are internal services that may or may not be on par with the state of the art. Apparently a big chunk of Amazon doesn't even use AWS at all, and instead use proto-cloud computer services that are a throwback from the 90s take on cloud computing.
    - sillyfluke 1y ago
      Amazon people often shitting on the internal messaging Chime app comes to mind.
    - al_borland 1y ago
      > Apparently a big chunk of Amazon doesn't even use AWS at all, and instead use proto-cloud computer services that are a throwback from the 90s take on cloud computing. Is there more information on this somewhere. I had leadership telling me and a few others that we needed to replicate something on-par with AWS for internal use (with about 10 devs and less than a year timeline). I thought this sounded crazy, and it would be interesting if Amazon themselves didn’t even have what was being asked of us.
      - motorest 1y ago
        > Is there more information on this somewhere. Yes, everywhere. You just need to look for it. See the following link, which has references to Apollo and MAWS. https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/amazon-notable-systems/ https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/amazon-notable-systems/ > I thought this sounded crazy, and it would be interesting if Amazon themselves didn’t even have what was being asked of us. Amazon has multiple incantations of this. As legend would have it, AWS was an offshoot of Amazon's internal cloud infrastructure designed to monetize it to amortize their investment on bare metal infrastructure. They partitioned their networks for security reasons and for a few years their infrastructure evolved independently. Then AWS was a huge success and took a life of its own. Only relatively recently did Amazon started to push to drop their internal infrastructure to put all their eggs on AWS in general but serverless solutions in particular.
seanmcdirmid 1y ago
Ex-Amazonians aren't the best boosters of Amazon. What really happens is that everyone at other big-corps start complaining about new people managers and product/project managers coming in with a culture that is a bit more toxic than normal.
elmerfud 1y ago
Anyone who shows up and their only contribution is to push AWS services because that's what they know, the first question I asked them is if they are capable of doing it themselves on-prem. Their answer is no or they don't know how to or some babbling on about it's more expensive and ROI and things like that I dismiss them immediately. Because those may all be true things but without the ability to do it yourself it is impossible to make an accurate assessment if AWS or another cloud service is actually a good fit for what you're doing.
- travelalberta 1y ago
  What I would give for my org to just buy an oxide rack and run everything license free on there. Shame the only people with access to our CIO are salesmen…

malfist 1y ago

lol, have you looked at our stock price lately? Flat YTD. And Jassy is terrible at earnings calls, he always spooks the investors. Firing people to make new new hire grants is more expensive

master_crab 1y ago
At what point does the board and Bezos start thinking Jassy is the problem?
- malfist 1y ago
  Hopefully soon. He's big innovations as CEO have been betting everything on AI and RTO
  - cebert 1y ago
    That’s what most institutional investors seem to want
    - jalapenos 1y ago
      We need them in the office... but also to replace them with AI... All sounds like a sick fetish. I want to see them getting replaced - I want to see the look on their face and their archive box walk
      - toomuchtodo 1y ago
        The fetish, if you can call it that in this context, is control.
- lazystar 1y ago
  Even if they did, who would replace him? The risk of choosing someone that could end up making things even worse is pretty high.
- ethbr1 1y ago

bigbadfeline 1y ago

> Three months from now - Amazon hiring 50k new corporate workers. Wanna bet? The 3-month balance of hired minus fired will be less than 20K. Those ballrooms don't pay for themselves [1]. Let's mark the calendar 01/27/26 [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-ballroom-donors-white-house-stand-to-gain/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-ballroom-donors-white-hou...

lamontcg 1y ago

> Constant churn is simply the new big tech strategy to keep employees on their toes. Amazon has been doing that since it was founded, certainly 2001-2006. Every year there would be stack ranking, and they'd get rid of employees and even entire departments in reorgs and layoffs.