Amazon Shrinks Workforce by 100k | Hacker News Reader

Amazon Shrinks Workforce by 100k

financialpost.com

29 pointsmgh27 comments

Two things about this article stand out to me:

1. Amazon is seemingly losing 100k employees in a quarter to attrition, and not via layoffs?

First Google result for "number of Amazon employees" turns up 1.6M globally, so that would be a 6% workforce reduction in a quarter? Is that normal, or does Amazon have particularly high churn? Amazon's scale is quite staggering.

2. There are a ton of tech companies either actively laying off or freezing hiring. More than half the article is just lists of tech companies reining in hiring. Yet, the overall unemployment rate is still quite low by historic standards. I wonder how much of the current / upcoming recession is going to be limited to tech vs. a broader decline, and to what extent the current hiring slowdowns persist over time.

I see a wide range of attrition figures quoted for Amazon. In the last year they range from 12% PA to high 30s and sometimes more in the lower skilled areas. (They also have this interesting split of regrettable and non-regrettable attrition).

I would not think 24% PA overall would be too surprising based on this.

AMZN is three global mega corps in a stock ticker trenchcoat; consumer retail, digital/devices, and AWS. These days you could put Ads in there as well.

As I mentioned elsewhere those huge numbers are specifically about about retail operations/fulfillment. In that industrial sector, generally “warehouse” workers, yes 20-50% turnover does happen. Hiring at that scale and rate is crazy.

For corporate and tech employees Amazon has always been in line with that industry averages of say 10-15% per year. I think everyone has seen the job market on the high side as people find job hopping opportunities in the past year.

Disclaimer: principal at AWS, everything above is public info slash personal opinion.

>After relying on attrition to winnow its staff, Amazon now has about 100,000 fewer employees than in the previous quarter.

Only Amazon could normalize losing 100k people via attrition

I could see other large employers of lower skill labor churning 20% a year. Walmart, McDonalds, CVS, etc...

Healthcare. COVID was an eye-opener to a lot of doctors and nurses.

The article title from the editor is junk, or misleading at best. The attrition and hiring comments were specifically about retail/fulfillment/operations and the degree to which that scaled up in 2020-21. This was very clear in both q1 and q2 earnings. The intent was to naturally shed jobs in that area through attrition, reduction in part time workers etc.

Theres been no change or reduction in the _tech_ employee side for retail, digital, or aws that I have seen.

Disclaimer: Principal at AWS, but everything above is from public statements/filings/etc.

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