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> previously having overhired Funny way of saying that Jassy told people he doesn't like the culture of a larger amazon. Also, if we overhired in 2020-2022, w

by malfist 8mo ago

> previously having overhired Funny way of saying that Jassy told people he doesn't like the culture of a larger amazon. Also, if we overhired in 2020-2022, why the hell are we still correcting it in 2026? Did none of the layoffs in 2023 on do the job? Just an all around failure of leadership with no ownership.

surgical_fire 8mo ago
Oh believe me, I am not defending the prick. We are in a thread of Amazon holding engineering meetings after AI-related outages after laying off 30k people. If anything this highlights gross incompetence of a moronic leadership. It should be them being laid off. If overhiring indeed happened, it is also a failure of leadership. Hiring too many people and then firing a bunch of people causes friction, loss of knowledge, decreased morale, etc.
- malfist 8mo ago
  But like, what if we did the layoffs bit by bit and tell people each time there will be more and stay tuned. Surely that's a sign of strong leadership. Just like "muscle confusion" for workouts! Can't let people feel to safe or stable.
keeda 8mo ago
> Did none of the layoffs in 2023 on do the job? No, because the calculus of layoffs shifted. Briefly, there is always a natural attrition rate A%, but whenever companies do an X% layoff they expect a smaller Y% additional attrition (due to morale etc.) So they expect an overall (A + X + Y)% reduction in headcount within a few months of the layoffs. However, the job market swung so rapidly from pro-employee to pro-employer in that timeframe that the Y% never happened, and in fact there was even a drop in A%. And so companies still ended up with more employees than planned and had to scramble to achieve their headcount goals using other means (RTO mandates, shifting headcount offshore, further layoffs with AI washing, etc.) A bit more detail on the calculus in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46142948 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46142948

by malfist 8mo ago

surgical_fire 8mo ago

Oh believe me, I am not defending the prick. We are in a thread of Amazon holding engineering meetings after AI-related outages after laying off 30k people. If anything this highlights gross incompetence of a moronic leadership. It should be them being laid off. If overhiring indeed happened, it is also a failure of leadership. Hiring too many people and then firing a bunch of people causes friction, loss of knowledge, decreased morale, etc.

malfist 8mo ago
But like, what if we did the layoffs bit by bit and tell people each time there will be more and stay tuned. Surely that's a sign of strong leadership. Just like "muscle confusion" for workouts! Can't let people feel to safe or stable.

keeda 8mo ago

> Did none of the layoffs in 2023 on do the job? No, because the calculus of layoffs shifted. Briefly, there is always a natural attrition rate A%, but whenever companies do an X% layoff they expect a smaller Y% additional attrition (due to morale etc.) So they expect an overall (A + X + Y)% reduction in headcount within a few months of the layoffs. However, the job market swung so rapidly from pro-employee to pro-employer in that timeframe that the Y% never happened, and in fact there was even a drop in A%. And so companies still ended up with more employees than planned and had to scramble to achieve their headcount goals using other means (RTO mandates, shifting headcount offshore, further layoffs with AI washing, etc.) A bit more detail on the calculus in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46142948 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46142948