Amazon Is Said To Plan To Lay Off 10,000 Employees - Slashdot

Posted by msmash

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  but I'm struck by people in HR being laid off; in my experience they're usually among the last to go

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    I was just thinking that. Two of my boys worked at a local Amazon EFC, and their only interaction with anything HR related involved a smartphone app's automation. Very hard to speak or see a real live human. Figure they don't seem to be too top-heavy or overly staffed in that regard based on what I've heard.

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    My last company had mostly contractors working as full-time recruiters. When there's a hiring freeze they let about 80% of HR go by not renewing contracts.

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    Recruiters are usually among the first to go when a large layoff happens and they are in HR. If you're laying off 10k people you're probably not going to be hiring at the same pace as you were before deciding to lay off 10k people. Eventually if they return to a growth pattern they will grow the recruiting teams again. The rest of HR will likely be protected for the time being.

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      But who is going to recruit the recruiters?

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        Probably Turtles -- they're at every level [wikipedia.org].

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      The myth that there's no room to say "Merry Christmas" is just that: a myth. Most of America says Merry Christmas.

      Dec 24 is a Saturday. Might be a workday for Walmart employees, who have to be there to sell to those last-minute shoppers, but not for most of the US.

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    Do you find it exhausting to have to consider everything through the lens of American elections? Buy sweeter grapes, man.

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      It's an American company. Politics and business are inevitably intertwined.

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    Settle down grandpa, I don't think Bezos really cares which politicians he buys. If anything, the timing is related to their quarterly earnings call, which was on Oct 27. If they expect holiday shopping to be down, doing it now sets them up for a good Q1 2023, no matter how bad Q4 ends up being. While they can blame an underperforming Q4 on "the economy" and "supply chain", it would be a harder case to make for Q1.

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        Was the Washing Times available for purchase? Because the easy answer if you want control the narrative is to buy all sources.

        https://www.cjr.org/special_re... [cjr.org]

        "The two biggest reasons not to be concerned about Bezos owning the Post are that the Post has a powerful and long history of independence; and that, according to multiple sources, Bezos has never demonstrated an inclination to interfere with the Post’s journalism."

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          cjr really said that? Lowers my opinion of cjr a little.

          Of course you don't need to buy all sources to control the narrative. And it's not about planting articles, it's about all those things which don't get covered, or get a small notice on page 3.

          To get ahead in the professional world today, the most important asset is a keen sense of knowing what the boss wants and doing it without being asked to, and journalists are no exception. It's not even that Bezos would fire them if they failed to do it. It's tha

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          You can literally watch the overwhelming majority of the news media talking heads across multiple networks parrot the exact same keywords to describe something horrific their political "enemy of democracy" might have done that hour based on perpetually-anonymous sources.

          It's quite clear a narrative is being perpetuated, because the odds of perfect linguistic alignment across a universe of boob tube stars like that are far greater than any lottery. Given that fact, I'd say it's obvious anyone who more align

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    I feel like I've been hearing about tech layoffs since the summer, this is hardly a surprise or an aberration.

    Besides, to the extent that a major company making layoffs could affect the election it is good form to wait till after the voting, just like the DOJ is supposed to refrain from politically potent announcements, unless you're an actual political operative you don't want to be part of an "October surprise" who tries to create a temporary poll bounce right as people go out to vote. You want voters rea

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      Step 1: Promise XXX,XXX new jobs to be created under "your" administration, to secure votes two years ago.

      Step 2: Support massive business tax breaks in order to help them fill those political positions.

      Step 3: After the midterm vote, fire most of the expendable chaff you needed in Step 1.

      What exactly is stopping this from lather, rinse, and repeat for the political win in either party?

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        The fact that it's not actually a single person responsible for all three of those steps like your list suggests.

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          Really. No current leader or representative ever touted a good economy and good job prospects under their watch? I suppose next you'll try and convince me education refunds weren't strung on a stick like a carrot, and abortion wasn't weaponized as an act of desperation to secure votes too.

          There's a reason Administrations and entire parties have carved the country up into the political Us vs. Them. Because they know it takes far more than one person too. It's why the "majority" is so key.

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            All of them do. But lets review your conspiracy theory again:

            Step 3 is the politician somehow firing people who were hired in step 1?? Political leaders don't actually have that much control over the economy or job creation, and they certainly don't have either the ability or desire to fire voters at any time.

            Uhhh, abortion was weaponized for decades to rile up GOP voters and justify the stacking of the SCOTUS.

            I'm not sure why you're suddenly offended by the massive public backlash over the blatant gaming o

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        So Musk is a tool of the liberal elite?

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          *Musk, scribbling out a check for Chevrolet*

          "I swear, the stupid shit a guy has to buy around here to prove he's not a 'tool' of anyone..."

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    So let me get this straight. Amazon is punishing workers for voting democrat? Sounds like a wonderful place to work.

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      Amazon is merely reminding those hired in political positions that their services are no longer necessary now that their vote has been secured towards the corporate-favored party.

      The notice will be sent along with a 10% coupon for Amazon Prime day.

      Shop smart. Shop S-Mart.

      Oh and higher unemployment is also a great way to nuke unionization movements while leaders pretend unions are cool now. So yeah, there's that.

      • You sound like the crazy uncle that ever says not to talk with on thanksgiving.

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    ANOTHER CONSPIRACY! Oh Noes!
  • So what's your take on all the companies that announced layoffs right before the midterms?

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    I love this comment. I love how it's currently voted +5 insightful. I don't think it will stay that way, but glad it got the visibility it deserves if at least for a moment.

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    the latest layoff cascade started with Twitter, November 4 (before election day), although it was presaged by the wave of layoffs by Lyft, Stripe, Coinbase, Microsoft, Snap, Tesla and Shopify in October.

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    What is your point? That somehow youth would have magically voted Republican in the midterms had they known these layoffs were coming?
    
    They might have, provided the GOP had done something - Anything - Meaningful at the state or federal level in the past decade to demonstrate they are on the side of the workers. Union protections. Minimum wage. Sick leave. Severance pay. Anything.
    
    Instead, all the GOP did during Trump's time was pass a huge tax cut for corporations and billionaires which was just used fo

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    Facebook, Google, Twitter, Salesforce all announced their cuts well before the election. Conspiracy theory much?

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    You really believe that when people get laid off from their jobs, they automatically stop voting, too? Bizarre. Personally, I don't even feel it necessary to tell my employer how I voted or plan to vote.

• Would be awesome if she parsed all of that money out and gave it to each of the employees who lost their job. I know it's only 10K a piece, but that would help quite a few families out.

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    He didn't give her $100M. He placed $100M in her control, for distribution to charity. If you can find a way to declare those folks a charity, more power to you.

• If Amazon had listened to us when we told them to fire the writers and showrunners of "Rings of Power" because they were insulting Tolkien's work and saying they could write better than him...

  if they had listened to us, Amazon would be cashing "Rings of Power" instead of firing people, but NO, because they know better than us (client).

• With the super high salaries for tech workers, it wouldn't surprise me if part of the timing of this is to leverage the layoffs at Meta and Twitter to depress tech salaries. Probably not, though it may have that impact. More realistically, everyone is afraid of a coming recession, so they're cutting expenses to better weather it.

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  • I think there is collusion, but...

    ...my guess is they've wanted to cut their excesses for a long time and colluded to do it at the same time to reduce an exodus. Most of these provide free meals. So their office decides: instead of giving premium resort-grade lunches (Google's sashimi bar, for example), we want to reduce the costs to be more conventional cafeteria food. If the major players collude to make the cuts at the same time, it reduces the sense of entitlement in their developers and limits the exodus.
    
    I think they've all wan

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      ...my guess is they've wanted to cut their excesses for a long time and colluded to do it at the same time to reduce an exodus

      My guess is they didn't. Meta has seen a drastic fall in revenue over the last couple of years, job losses were inevitable.

      Twitter was just bought by someone for way more than it's worth and lumbered with giant loans that means it has to come up with $1B extra a year it didn't before. Job losses upon Musk taking over were inevitable.

      Amazon I assume is just reacting to its curre

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    More realistically, watching the worlds largest mega-corps do this, is how you manufacture a recession. We act like CEOs aren't sniffing Bezos farts looking for financial approval to mirror the same excuse for "rightsizing".

    Let's hope the trendsetters don't go viral. A 10% unemployment rate by Christmas, isn't even something Santa can spin well.

• Amazon is one of many big tech companies that "hoard talent." They aggressively hire as many top engineers as possible and figure out what to do with them later. This is a practice I find stupid and wasteful, but it's in vogue in Silicon Valley and every company that mimics the big players. Cutting 3% of corporate employees is not cause for an alarm, but just them coming to their senses about their past excesses, IMHO.
  
  Hiring a ton of interns and then figuring out what to do with them makes sense. They're more malleable. They cost less. They honestly don't have specialized skills and talent. Amazon and most of the big tech companies will aggressively hire people with 20+ years of experience and then figure out what to do with them. Many times, they don't even have a need. They just want a pool of talented people to throw on a project and be able to expand faster.
  
  Traditional businesses identify a need first and hire second. Traditional businesses hire people with skillsets to match their need. For example, if a hospital needs a gynecologist, they hire a gynecologist. They don't hire a heart surgeon and tell them..."hey, we're short in gyno this quarter...take 4 weeks and get yourself up to speed on delivering babies."
  
  This practice of talent hoarding also lends itself to what I call the "developer as a stem cell" pattern in which a company hires the very smartest people they can find and gives them a baptism by fire to become an expert in a technology they are not qualified for. They force really smart people to adapt to specializations rather than just hire someone with a lot of experience in the specialization needed. They think it works...as a guy who has seen it in action, it doesn't. You hire some young guy who went to Stanford and did prototypes of small apps in JavaScript and Python and tell them...hey...you're now a DBA...shit will happen. The worst is you won't figure it out until years down the road. The initial prototypes will work...they just won't scale and be a nightmare to maintain and cost you a ton in cloud computing costs and even have a huge environmental impact from the wasted CPU cycles.
  
  According to Big Tech logic, if you have a pool of fungible stem-cell developers, you can dynamically staff up projects and then obviously lay them off because each developer can be transformed into the specialty you need. They'd rather throw a smart, but completely unqualified person on a project today than either maintain separate pools of specialized professionals or wait a few weeks to hire someone who is fully qualified to put on the project.
  
  Traditional businesses have Darwinistic pressure on them. If you do excessive and stupid things, you're at risk of going out of business. Big Tech is dominated by companies that are making so much money efficiency doesn't matter. Amazon is making tons of money both because of their strategic retail position as well as advertising and cloud computing revenue. The problem is they make soooo much money because of their strategic choices, the business units think they're doing well tactically. So hire a super JavaScript dev to lead a data-management/data-science team?...well, if the business unit is making money, they can make as many expensive mistakes as they want and the concern is only theoretical. They can throw tons of money at innovation projects that don't innovate or make sense. Google and Meta are the poster children of this, but Amazon also has Astro, that robot they released, but didn't sell and no one I know has any clue why they bothered. They certainly don't seem to take the project seriously
  
  So these 2022 Q4 layoff are less a harbinger of a tech apocalypse and more the stupidest players throwing the wildest parties changing their model from being a daycare/fraternity for tech nerds and more running themselves like a real business. For now, the tech industry is fine. The biggest players have used their unlimited revenue and VC funding to create a culture of ridiculous exces

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    They don't necessarily have to find something for all of them to do, so long as the competing companies would have hired them they are achieving their purpose.

• They've been laying off folks by the thousands [yahoo.com] in addition to all the other chaos that Musk has been unleashing (blue check mark nonsense, advertiser exodus, etc, etc).

  Am I the only one baffled by the utter lack of Twitter news on slashdot [slashdot.org]?

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    Twitter, as a subject, has never been "...Stuff that matters."

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      Crypto.com doesn't really follow under "Stuff that matters", either, yet they got two stories posted on Slashdot within the last 72 hours.

      They aren't even the exchange that went bust, either.

• Has amazon really been overstaffed or under-delivering for years? I see this more as a result of the end of Covid, which was a boon for amazon. That doesn't mean they were wrong to staff up for it at the time. Things ebb and flow. Layoffs are not necessarily the result of malice or ineptitude.

• this fits perfectly with Bezos plan, he now will be providing "charity" by giving severance packages.
  mission accomplished.

• Amazon has lost many of it’s top talent already because their stock weighted total compensation reduced actual annual take home by a large percentage.

  No one is going to want to work for an Amazon that pays poorly, does not offer job security, and is an uncompromising work environment.

• After learning about all the H1-B workers being let go by Facebook, Twitter and now Amazon, there are going to be alot of outgoing flights to India in 60 days.

• "Working for Amazon is like slavery"
  ^ a quote I've seen not once, or twice, but handfuls of times.

  I guess firing all these people is practically like Emancipating them, then? Now they're free to go be their best selves without the oppressive hand of Amazon keeping them down with the lure of a paltry $18/hour.

  Be free my lovelies, be free!