Amazon laying off corporate employees in rare cutback

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-laying-off-corporate-employees-in-rare-cutback/

by stratelogical • 8 years ago

183 143 8 years ago

knowflux• 8 years ago

Acc to article, seems like it’s happening in established businesses like Retail. Maybe those old businesses are due for some consolidation?

In last earnings release, Bezos said he’s doubling down on Alexa, which I presume includes increased hiring.

gargarplex• 8 years ago

Voice search is already huge and I imagine it may be even bigger. I see Amazon as a threat to Google in this area.

homero• 8 years ago

It's always astounded me how a technology change can kill a company overnight. Google almost died with searches going mobile but somehow bought Android and survived but killed BlackBerry. Now voice search is a risk.

sharemywin• 8 years ago

I could see these devices given way free as some kind of set-top+assistant if you buy our TV service.

sah2ed7• 8 years ago

Amazon as a threat to Google in this area.

LOL. That is like saying Apple (iPhones) are a threat to Google (Android) when it was Apple that first brought touch-based smartphones to market.

You probably meant: "Google is a threat to Amazon in this area" because Amazon invented and still dominates the smart speaker category.

In other words, Google didn't know a market existed for such devices until Amazon created a market for them.

saturdaysaint• 8 years ago

Surveys show that Alexa is being used for basic Siri 1.0 searches ("What's the weather","Play x on Pandora", timers, alarms, novelty questions) and little else. Few people have activated a skill or ordered something. A graphical user interface is going to be a vastly richer and more useful interactive experience for a very long time.

moonka• 8 years ago

I wonder what type of positions are being targeted in these layoffs? They mentioned which groups but not whom.

randomfool• 8 years ago

My understanding is that most groups outside of Alexa and AWS are in a hiring freeze and they are trying to cut down on the amount of middle-management across the board.

taurath• 8 years ago

Can confirm, the recruiter spam I get is now only Alexa and AWS - the retail section has all but stopped.

Overtonwindow• 8 years ago

Also worth noting that the article doesn't say anything about re-hiring, or transferring. Just laid off. I wonder why..

galkk• 8 years ago

it does

“As part of our annual planning process, we are making head count adjustments across the company — small reductions in a couple of places and aggressive hiring in many others,” a spokesman said. “For affected employees, we work to find roles in the areas where we are hiring.”

disc: Amazon employee

stratelogical• 8 years ago

I think all positions (SDEs, Business Managers, Marketers) in Amazon's oldest retail businesses (books, consumer electronics, kitchen, home etc.). These are businesses where Amazon has significant market segment share (for example, according to some research out there, in books it is ~80%). So it is natural to think: how many people do you need to keep the lights on? Maybe 5 years ago these businesses needed 100s of people, but with with 80% market segment share, do these businesses need the same number of people? My thinking if I were Jeff would be: If I reduce head count in these businesses, how much more free cash flow would I generate (assuming there is not much room left for these businesses to grow)? In other words, in businesses where I have the highest market segment share, how many people do I need to continue to keep that share. And, if people can be moved elsewhere to higher growth areas, then why not? If I need to move them back to books and electronics at some point in the future, I will.

Disclaimer: I'm an Amazon employee, but the comments here are my own.

radiorental• 8 years ago

Could this be in any way related to the roll out of HQ2? Using that expansion to trim perceived dead-wood?

If so, this might be the first of a few re-orgs.

zitterbewegung• 8 years ago

It seems like the point of HQ2 is to appease the current administration for tax cuts, allow for them to cut back on the fact they overexpanded their teams, get even more tax breaks from the local government where they expand, and get a bunch new fresh talent that can be worked to death.

jonknee2• 8 years ago

Considering they have over 4,000 active job postings for Seattle and are building several new office towers... No.

Animats2• 8 years ago

So why do they want a second corporate headquarters?

walrus014• 8 years ago

They have very nearly exhausted the pool of strong technical talent that can be recruited locally within the seattle area, who are not already gainfully employed at some other tech company. Also because building new office campus space in Seattle is becoming a bottleneck. Amazon is spread out through a bunch of temporarily leased buildings until the new towers are finished. Also they have sort of exhausted the number of people who are willing to relocate to Seattle.

leggomylibro• 8 years ago

Also, a lot of the people who were willing to relocate to Seattle are reluctant to stay after years of worsening ostracization and seething resentment.

Cyranix• 8 years ago

On the "talent pool exhaustion" idea: it's common knowledge that almost no one goes to Amazon with the intent of staying there long-term. From what I gather, they're still grappling with people staying just long enough to get a healthy chunk of material benefits before moving on to work that they actually might _want_ to do (helped by having Amazon listed on their resume).

lev992• 8 years ago

Seattle Times likes to give Amazon bad press. Seattle has enough other tech companies to absorb a few hundred jobs. Companies routinely end up over-hiring or having redundant positions. It appears that they are laying off less than 10% of their Seattle staff, while they are still expanding the amount of office space they occupy in Seattle.

This seems like no big deal for Seattle and Amazon.

myroon5• 8 years ago

"less than 10% of their Seattle staff"

even less than 1%

lev992• 8 years ago

The problem is "a few hundred" is an undefined number.

400 would be about 1%, which would be fairly reported as a few hundred. My ceiling number is very high, but I would believe more than 1% are let go.

everdev• 8 years ago

I've always wondered how companies like Amazon and Apple with piles of cash justify not giving raises or passing laying off people. I understand that you want to be smart with your money but if I'm on the business end of this decision it probably hurts more than getting laid off from a company that's struggling and has no other options.

rowyourboat• 8 years ago

They justify it by the same reasoning that any other company justifies a layoff. How much money the company makes does not really factor in, they don't exist for the benefit of society.

beambot• 8 years ago

but if I'm on the business end...

How would you justify the raises and keeping the redundant positions -- especially if they were already paid market rates or if they were underperformers?

cobookman• 8 years ago

Over-hiring can be an issue as well. Too many cooks in the kitchen isn't a good thing.

jxub4• 8 years ago

Yes, I've also been curious about how the rainforest company can get away with treating its employees supposedly not as well as other top tech companies, and other than AWS, I don't know of any special tech they've got going on for them (maybe the stock options carrot is the materialistic but true answer).

Also, surprisingly, both Amazon and Apple aren't really known for prolific OSS contributions according to their size.

jack_h• 8 years ago

Also, surprisingly, both Amazon and Apple aren't really known for prolific OSS contributions according to their size.

I can't speak to Amazon, but Apple has quite a few prolific OSS contributions. Off the top of my head there's llvm/clang, cups, swift, GCD, and webkit.

pascalxus• 8 years ago

I think if they were located in the bay area they wouldn't be able to get away with treating their employees so poorly. It's all about the supply and demand for labor. Outside the bay area, the labor supply and demand are much more inbalance whereas the bay area has limited labor supply due to the housing crisis. On the penninsula there are 4 jobs for every 1 resident, this gives workers a much larger bargaining power.

gregdunn• 8 years ago

Also, surprisingly, both Amazon and Apple aren't really known for prolific OSS contributions according to their size.

The amzn [0], aws[1], and awslabs[2] github pages combined have 500+ repositories. AWS contributed back to the Linux kernel[3] and Xen[4] for Spectre and Meltdown related things. There are other projects large enough that they are under their own page, like Blox[5]. There's been plenty of others I've stumbled across randomly - this list isn't meant to be exhaustive or even close to it, but just what I personally can think of off the top of my head.

(Disclaimer: I work at AWS, and contribute to an open source project as a portion of my job. This isn't an official post or anything of that nature, and opinions expressed are my own - I'm just a random dude that wants to share that a lot of cool open source stuff happens at Amazon/AWS!)

[0] https://github.com/amzn [1] https://github.com/aws [2] https://github.com/awslabs [3] https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v4.x/ChangeLog-4.15.... [4] https://lists.xenproject.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2018-01... [5] https://github.com/blox/blox

jobu• 8 years ago

Laying off people is just a tool to get rid of low performers and cut costs. From the article:

"A manager in one unit making cuts said his team was briefed that Bezos and the Amazon brass wanted to put more pressure on managers to weed out lower performers and enforce spending discipline after the rapid growth of recent years."

Layoffs seem kinda shitty, but it's usually better than firing with cause. The worker will still qualify for unemployment benefits, and the employer doesn't have to go through the time and expense of a PIP (Performance Improvement Plan).

pktgen• 8 years ago

The worker will still qualify for unemployment benefits

The worker would qualify for unemployment benefits even if fired for good-faith poor performance. For terminations, only gross misconduct (criminal acts, deliberately failing to work, etc.) is disqualifying.

lsc• 8 years ago

From watching friends, for higher end jobs? you are almost never terminated 'with cause' - I don't know even one programmer who got fired from a fully paid programming job (I mean, a job paying six figures, not a "shadow IT" gig.) who has gotten fired in a way they couldn't collect unemployment insurance, even after a PIP.

For low end jobs, retail and the like? it's pretty common to be fired 'with cause.' even for small things that I do twice a week, like being late or something.

I suspect that it's because employers only pay unemployment insurance on the first $7K or so of wages they pay an employee in a year, so while an increase in their unemployment insurance rate matters if they are paying retail rates, it really doesn't if they are paying programmer rates.

The funny thing is that I don't think any of my programmer friends would fight it either way; it's not worth the effort. But friends working retail? yeah, sometimes it makes sense to fight it... and their employer actually gets up in court, and argues why this person they paid almost nothing and then fired shouldn't get what amounts to a pittance.

The whole thing seems kind of unfair and messed up.

skookumchuck2• 8 years ago

with piles of cash justify not giving raises or passing laying off people

Probably for the same reason that you don't give to me your cash left over after expenses and taxes.

thinkling2• 8 years ago

Apple throws off lots of profits and thus is sitting on lots of cash. (Most of it overseas.)

As you probably know, Amazon profits have been marginal or non-existent. They use the net profit from some businesses to pay for expansion in others. To do that, they have to actually produce net profits in some of their businesses, i.e. keep costs under control. Bezos is using the older retail business to finance his newer, shinier adventures in digital devices. And the layoffs are exactly in the retail business, the cash cow business, to free up more money for shinier things.

toomuchtodo• 8 years ago

It’s the other way around. AWS subsidizes everything.

amznthroway• 8 years ago

The hiring freeze has already been horrendous. We're told to keep hitting all our goals even if we lose people and can't hire to backfill. Now we're just straight up losing people to layoffs? Keeping the lights on alone is barely possible with the resources we have.

It would be one thing if we were in dire straights as a company. Imho, this is just short-sighted nonsense so some senior leader can hit an arbitrary goal and get a bonus.

I wonder if Alexa or AWS are hiring.

jonknee2• 8 years ago

I wonder if Alexa or AWS are hiring.

... The very first sentence of the article:

as the company shifts resources into fast-growing areas like its work on voice assistant Alexa

dboreham• 8 years ago

short-sighted nonsense so some senior leader can hit an arbitrary goal and get a bonus

This is in fact how most business decisions are made.

BookmarkSaver5• 8 years ago

Yes, Amazon is known for its short-sightedness...

KallDrexx• 8 years ago

That's funny if they've had a hiring freeze since last week I got contacted by an Amazon recruiter wanting me to move to Seattle

davidw4• 8 years ago

Got one today too. Put on a Gore tex coat and stood under the shower, on cold, for a half an hour, and decided that Seattle is probably not to my liking outside of, say, late July.

enknamel• 8 years ago

As someone working in Amazon retail, I have to say I'm now worried. Though it does feel like we don't have enough people to do the work we are planning to do for the year.

BookmarkSaver5• 8 years ago

It would be one thing if we were in dire straights as a company.

Oh, so as long as the company is profitable, it should just throw money at employees that are no longer adding net value?

Imho, this is just short-sighted nonsense so some senior leader can hit an arbitrary goal and get a bonus.

Based on what? Reading an article with no internal insight and absolutely no knowledge of the business itself? Sounds more like you have an ax to grind.

I wonder if Alexa or AWS are hiring.

I mean, you didn't even read the article.

southphillyman• 8 years ago

I mean, you didn't even read the article.

They work at Amazon, probably doesn't have the time to read full articles

throwamzn6969• 8 years ago

Guys like Bezos and Wilke don't really worry about their bonuses. It's not about bonuses, it's about becoming the first trillion-dollar company.

amorphid• 8 years ago

I've been contacted be 2 or 3 AWS recruiters in the last month, so presumably they are hiring.

philipwhiuk2• 8 years ago

Keeping the lights on alone is barely possible with the resources we have.

Surely with half a million employees you have at least one person on lightbulbs.

wwice• 8 years ago

Surely with half a million employees you have at least one person on lightbulbs.

Or you can just ask Alexa to turn the lights.

vkou• 8 years ago

Imho, this is just short-sighted nonsense so some senior leader can hit an arbitrary goal and get a bonus.

Welcome to centralized economic planning, mega-corp edition. Pick a number.

Negative1• 8 years ago

At first I assumed this was a stack ranking type "cutting the dead weight loose" move but doesn't appear to be so. The article cites "too much staff for the work" but that seems strange; Amazon has never been bereft of ambition ("Think Big"). What would be the real strategic impetus for slashing hundreds of positions? How does this jibe with leadership principles like "Hire and Develop the Best" and "Insist on the Highest Standards"?

gorbot• 8 years ago

Another leadership principle is frugality. No idea who or why people were fired, but could be to save $. I know that amazon in general is trying to get more frugal / profitable

bitL• 8 years ago

Roll-out of NLP/SR/TTS ML system automating most of customer interaction? If you are a seller on Amazon, it already feels like talking to bots when you hit some issues, maybe they can now automate most of those issue types?

BookmarkSaver5• 8 years ago

"Insist on the Highest Standards"?

Don't maintain costs that that aren't adding net value?

philipwhiuk2• 8 years ago

From the article it looks like duplication between acquisitions.

tyingq3• 8 years ago

A layoff of any kind or scale is interesting for AMZN, given that they have so much diversity of teams, jobs, skills, products, etc. It's interesting that they couldn't repurpose a few hundred people, even given their infamous up or out mentality. Sounds like they are knowingly giving up good people since the current culture fires anyone that doesn't produce already. Willingly giving up good people doesn't seem like a healthy signal.

Edit: Encountered this at a company acquired by private equity right before the 2008 bubble. They did 3 straight stack-rank/fire-the-bottom rounds. Was clear in the second round we were letting go of really good talent to the competition solely for some executive's bonus tied to short term numbers. And, it did bite them later.

paulddraper• 8 years ago

Sounds like they are knowingly giving up good people since the current culture fires anyone that doesn't produce already.

I wouldn't be surprised if these lay offs were also chosen to increase average employee quality.

KKKKkkkk1• 8 years ago

It's a super healthy signal.

Let's say hypothetically that Amazon started a VR project and hired a team of 100 PhDs whose expertise is VR to work on that project. After 2 years, the company realized that it's not working out and shut that project down.

Because of the bad optics of layoffs (especially of such highly skilled engineers), the engineers were reassigned to various positions that require expertise in computer graphics. Bear in mind that these 100 engineers have niche skills and most of them feel that VR is their life's calling; they're not interested in generic computer graphics. They are overpaid, underemployed, and miserable.

The best of them leave after a month of two; the remainder trudges on for a year until they also leave or get pushed out. The outcome is that Amazon has wasted shareholder money and got themselves a bad rep with those engineers (and their friends). A straight layoff would have worked much better, but unfortunately most companies don't have the balls for it.

watwut• 8 years ago

Bear in mind that these 100 engineers have niche skills and most of them feel that VR is their life's calling; they're not interested in generic computer graphics. They are overpaid, underemployed, and miserable.

Except that you just made all that up. It is a huge major if. Especially that part about calling and the part about them having only niche skills.

Guess what those "best ones who leave" will do? You guessed right, they will do not VR.

perseusprime11• 8 years ago

They may be falling into the short term trap of wall street. With all the praise on Jeff Bezos recently, he will have to do anything to not take a step back and keep up with wall street’s expectations.

zebraflask• 8 years ago

Well, the whole thing with Amazon is "frugality." That's a frugal thing to do.

kirillzubovsky• 8 years ago

lol. Amazon employs almost half-million people, and still, a layoff of a couple hundred make it to the news.

Amazon laying off corporate employees in rare cutback

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