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10% over a year, split into two waves isn't that extreme. It seems like 5%/year is sort of industry norm.
by loeg 9mo ago
10% over a year, split into two waves isn't that extreme. It seems like 5%/year is sort of industry norm.
- refulgentis 9mo agoNot sure of your familiarity with FAANG pre-2022, but this is absolutely not the norm.
- joe_mamba 9mo agoZIRP was also not the norm. Times change though.
- mupuff1234 9mo agoBut these are profitable companies, now their cash on hand can actually earn interest.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- joe_mamba 9mo ago>But these are profitable companies Q: You know what investors and shareholders love more than having 1 billion dollars? A: Having 2 billion dollars. And with all the money being burned on AI, having 2 billion is better than 1. If mass layoffs causes the stock to go from 1 to 2, then guess what's gonna happen? In the ZIRP era companies would hire needlessly to get the stock up because that signaled growth to investors. Now it's the opposite, you trim because that gets the stock up, not because they conspire together to lay off people.
- loeg 9mo agoWhy is the highest and best use of a company's free cash paying the least productive employees, instead of returning cash to shareholders or investing it in something more productive?
- loeg 9mo agoCan you elaborate? I've been working in tech for 15 years and FAANG for 5. We've always had layoffs.
- WalterBright 9mo agoI've been in the tech industry for 45 years. Layoffs happen regularly. Well, not regularly, what it is is a chaotic system. There will be good times and bad times. The best way to deal with it is to immediately save, at a minimum, 6 months of runway. Preferably a year. When you're in between jobs, work on: 1. improving your job skills 2. network 3. build your resume by contributing to open source 4. start your own business
- refulgentis 9mo agoI don't intend to be dismissive by sharing a bunch, I ate a bunch of downvotes so I should share something. But, there's no singular, like, Wikipedia article for "tech layoffs spiked significantly in 2022 and have stayed elevated" - so this is a mix of informal and formal and academic and business news that treats that knowledge as implicit while discussing it. (I am deeply curious what valhalla you are at that skipped this so much that it was a foreign idea! N or A, it must be one of those two) https://www.nerdwallet.com/finance/learn/tech-layoffs https://www.nerdwallet.com/finance/learn/tech-layoffs https://www.reddit.com/r/Layoffs/comments/1ljvpr4/where_all_the_tech_workers_are_going/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Layoffs/comments/1ljvpr4/where_all_... https://progresschamber.org/insights/tech-has-shed-nearly-200k-jobs-since-january-2022/ https://progresschamber.org/insights/tech-has-shed-nearly-20... https://www.washington.edu/news/2025/05/14/tech-industry-layoffs/ https://www.washington.edu/news/2025/05/14/tech-industry-lay... https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/09/tech-layoffs-2022.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/09/tech-layoffs-2022.html
- loeg 9mo agoSure, it waxes and wanes. 2022-2023 were probably above average layoff years, while 2020-2021 before that were probably below average years. I think layoffs have fallen since 2023 rather than staying elevated, but I haven't attempted to quantify that.
- darth_avocado 9mo agoPre 2022 also did not have this many employees in FAANG.
- Lammy 9mo ago> It seems like 5%/year is sort of industry norm. That's because the people running these companies learned the hard way not to write their collusion down, so now they just all totally coincidentally act in the same way that ends up driving wages down and keeping workers afraid and in line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
- joe_mamba 9mo agoIt's not some global conspiracy, it just aligns with the end of the ZIRP era. Companies could ignore headcount and hire endlessly just to singla growth to investors, while free money was raining from the sky.
- dingaling 9mo agoAmazon made $17.4 billion profit in Q3 2025 alone. That is, they made so much money they couldn't find any way to spend over five BILLION per month even with this 'excess' headcount.
- readthenotes1 9mo agoAre you saying they should be a charity? Or is this like the old Soviet Union thing where people said they pretended to pay us and we pretended to work?
- joe_mamba 9mo ago>Amazon made $17.4 billion profit in Q3 2025 alone. I think investors would prefer if they made $20 billion profit next quarter. Hence the layoffs.
- loeg 9mo agoWhy would you explain this with a conspiracy theory of collusion instead of Occam's razor -- that they were responding to similar changes in market conditions, with input from similar shareholders?
- malfist 9mo ago10% over a year on top of Amazon's 10% rank and yank. Thats a huge cut.
- loeg 9mo agoWhat makes you think this is on top of some other layoff process?
- klodolph 9mo agoI’ll say that the parent comment is correct and explain why I think it’s correct. Amazon has demonstrated a preference for “unregretted attrition” (URA). URA is the name for what happens when engineers exit the company and Amazon is happy that they do. The exit can either be due to a PIP failure (performance improvement plan) or just unhappiness with the company. If you believe URA works well, then URA is how Amazon gets rid of low-performing employees. If you are like me, then you believe that URA is mostly explained by the following factors: - Failure of Amazon to successfully develop engineers. A good company will turn engineers into better engineers, and Amazon gets rid of them instead, which is inefficient. The attrition is only unregretted because Amazon was not competent enough to develop these engineers into better engineers. - Consequences of poor culture, causing good engineers to mentally check out and eventually leave. The attrition is only unregretted because the good engineers will care less and therefore look like bad performers, when they’re good performers in a bad environment. - A way for Amazon to avoid paying out stock grants at the 2-year mark (which is when you get most of your stock grants at Amazon). The attrition is only unregretted because somebody at Amazon cares more about the short-term bottom line. - A way for managers to exercise control over employees they don’t like. The attrition is only unregretted because Amazon’s decisions about employee performance are based on bad data provided by managers. I won’t share stories here but the targets are around 5% per year, maybe a little higher.
- loeg 9mo agoMeta also does something like 5% in unregretted attrition a year. I just don't know why you think AMZN wouldn't include those people in layoffs preferentially to higher performers.
- darth_avocado 9mo ago> Amazon has about 350,000 corporate employees and a total workforce of approximately 1.56 million. Is it mentioned anywhere that the roles eliminated are all going to be software engineers, because that’s what all the threads so far are interpreting this as. This feels more like preparing for a recession without saying it out loud. People aren’t buying as much anymore and with focus on cost savings across tech, can easily understand AWS not covering for lower retail revenue anymore.
- loeg 9mo agoIt's almost never only SWEs.