Amazon job cuts: Read the memos
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34427277 (203 comments, 2 days ago)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34253478 (462 comments, 15 days ago)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33626896 (279 comments, 1 month ago)
The inverted accountability scheme for leaders doing this is another perverse enabling factor; I've complained about this before, but that tends to lead to flames about why founders etc. can't have ownership of headcount and the fate of their companies etc.
I'm not seeing a clear solution for this culture of toying with thousands of peoples' lives for a quick buck... well, aside from the (sadly) politically loaded move to unionize more white collar work and thus provide actual accountability. Why unions are a political matter is beyond me; IATSE uses their strength to ensure excellent benefits for their members in media/entertainment.
I know it's much more difficult to fire people in the EU, but is there an exception if it's done as part of a layoff?
The only real solution I can think of is regulatory in nature (e.g. requiring paying out 6 months pay during a layoff, which might make companies think twice before "hiring ahead of growth")
Because let's face it, "hiring ahead of growth" is the real problem. These companies aren't firing people because they are making less money. They're firing people because they hired people before they actually needed them, in anticipation of future growth that didn't materialize.
tl;dr: There is a special process called collective redundancy which requires a 30 day notice given to the workers.
There are also country-specific rules.
Uk (not EU but europe despite what it says) requires consultancy and a minimum compensation for being fired
france its a bit more complex, but it sometimes requires the consent of the person being fired, so it can be very expensive.
1. The minimium notice period for termination of employment is between 1 and 3 months.
2. The employer must select which employees to lay off depending on social factors(age, do they have young children or other dependents, are they disabled etc.) and not based on performance ratings.
3. If the company is laying off staff, but also at the same time hiring people with a similar skillset, they have to offer the existing staff the preferred chance to take the positions.
I think there is also a culutural difference to think long term even when enjoying short term success, but perhaps that is also present in the US when comparing tech and non-tech companies.
And it's possible to hire contractors too.
At-will is worse than contract work, because the contractor knows when he will be let go.
1. The utter insanity of family medical insurance being tied to employment.
2. Non-compete agreements without full (or higher) compensation being valid.
I’m sure there are others, but those two are a good start.
Is that the point? That implies the market is hot again (and I agree with you, it will be eventually) and people are working where they want to. If that's your prediction, what's the problem here? The solution is not to jump ship to Google, then, isn't it?
I personally would prefer to be hired by a big tech company and then laid off, having received the salary, severance pay, and experience, than to never set my foot there.
The in-between time sucks, of course.
We wouldn't be here discussing this if the economy had not done so poorly.
What if on average, you hire 10 people a year. Each year, there's a 10% chance of having to lay off 10 people. Details of profit/loss aside, what is the optimal move? Never hire so you never have to lay anyone off? Hire only 5 people a year so the impact is not so large?
I’m not sure it works that way. With 100k fewer tech jobs, would there not have been fewer regular jobs as well?
My guess is that these people, who are "doomed", don't actually exist. I have a strong suspicion that, over the last few years, most folks got in while it was good, and are happy they were around while it lasted.
Saying they would have been better off with a "regular job" is pretty presumptuous. What if these folks are actually smart people who just saved up while FAANGs were offering huge salaries? What if this isn't actually a big deal? What if it was a good thing that ICs were getting paid a lot of money for a bit, instead of having wages suppressed by investors to prevent situations like "probably wouldn't have happened to them if they had another, more regular job."
Give me the money. Let me choose how I spend it. Don't pretend you know what is best for me.
The average tenure at these companies is what--18 months? Amazon especially.
I think it's delusional to act like a FANNG-gravy train role is something that'll be around in a decade. Especially now.
I'm not sure a union would have helped there, but I'm not opposed. Amazon tried to make hay while the sun was shining, and it didn't work out for all depts. It happens.
I have nothing to back up this claim, but it seems like selfishness is what caused reduction of unions in the US. And for the same selfishness it's tough to organize people and kickstart a new union.
1. I was saving for a house downpayment, so I put most my earnings right into the bank and had already minimized spending
2. They announced layoffs immediately, but then gave us time to finish work and transfer internally. If we couldn't transfer, they would lay us off after 6 weeks. This happened to me as I was a manager of a particular specialty and it was tough to transfer to a job I wanted. Furthermore, everyone around me was cut, so we could all work together and support eachother for 6 weeks.
3. My wife has a full time job so our income was reduced, not eliminated.
4. We had family nearby for any childcare problems, so I could focus on a new job hunt
5. I had friends and network nearby, so I could look for local jobs quickly and efficiently
6. I had a referral from an old co-worker, and that referral turned into my new job, which so far I love.
7. I had insisted on working remote from my hometown area, which has much lower cost of living (which helped with 4, 5), and made our situation much less dire
8. I got a lot of traction from a linkedin post during the 6 weeks job-hunt stage. This is just a function of my coworker network and I'm lucky to have those folks
I feel for those who didn't have these factors. I cannot imagine how difficult it would be to have to navigate visa issues on top of a lack of a local network and reduced / eliminated income. I definitely had home-court advantage in all this.
Should I care? After all it is about my salary
Why should I care about those companies? I wish them good, but unless theyre an outlier then I would rather accept better salary
From the hyper-scale startup point of view, it's blatantly unsustainable and frankly irresponsible to play fast-and-loose with people's careers by hiring them and then making the position redundant, sometimes within less than a year; even six months in some cases that I've known. The best one can hope for is a generous severance so as to buy time to find a new job in an increasingly crowded market.
Personally, I find layoffs irresponsible at a corporate level. When they happen they disrupt team relationships, gut out tribal knowledge, break trust, and create friction that trades short term savings for long term cost. The human cost for unemployment is also hard to ignore. For every 1% increase in unemployment there is a 1-1.6% increase in suicides.
I say that as someone who is working at a company that made headlines for layoffs.
A bit over-dramatic, no? Nothing to say about the employees who left their companies for Google to "make a quick buck"?
Business expand and contract. Should Google be considered a retirement home? The people who took these jobs are smart men and women who will go on to work at other companies. This isn't new.
I have no sympathy.
with whom?
The whole idea of capitalism involves competition and consistent growth, right? In any human society, that leads inevitably to war and conquest. It also means exploiting whatever resources are available, including human resources. Back in the day it was using colonial slaves to cheaply mine resources, deforesting for fuel/ships/etc, or hunting animals to extinction (food, oil, pelts, etc). Today it's using cheap labor in 3rd world countries, dumping chemicals in rivers, deforesting rainforest for cattle pasture. And when a competitor (foreign empire or corporation) threatens you, you basically work to either destroy or own the competition and their citizens/customers (although you might also simply make a backroom deal for peace). All for the wealth and glory of a corporation/CEO/board/Emperor/nation.
Our companies are just acting as the new empires of global society. Have been for nearly a century, when the old empires began to crumble. Same humans, different maps & hats.
I think Germany's work councils could be a good starting point to work from.
What conversations do you need to have? Genuine question.
That makes sense on the face of it, but if you look back over the other professions that have unionized (steel workers, auto workers, truck drivers), the lives of the actual workers always seems to have suffered post-unionization.
And their take is, directly from their site, "$95.00 per quarter and 1% of gross earnings under the contract."
The Jobs Bank was set up by mutual agreement between U.S. automakers and the United Auto Workers union to protect workers from layoffs. Begun in the mid-1980s, the program is being tapped by thousands of workers. Many of those receiving checks do community service work or take courses. Others sit around, watching movies or doing crossword puzzles -- all while making $26 an hour or more.
The Big Three automakers agreed to the system to protect union workers from outsourcing and technology. But with Ford and General Motors losing money in North America -- and contract negotiations due in 2007 -- the future of the unique program is uncertain.
https://www.npr.org/2006/02/02/5185887/idled-auto-workers-ta...
https://www.levels.fyi/companies/amazon/salaries/software-en...
https://www.levels.fyi/companies/amazon/salaries/software-en...
In fact, almost any innovative/high-skilled job pays a fraction compared to the US. It is much harder to innovate in Europe.
My take is because unions facilitate less profit for C-levels, who then buy/rent lobbyists to bribe, errr, "persuade" politicians to enact laws or regulations or whatever to keep unions out.
As many comments have already pointed out, all these companies are sitting on a huge cushion of money, and if you have money the best moment to invest is during a crisis. Companies realized a long time ago that they should find ways of lowering salaries, now the big moment finally came it seems.
Are we at the beginning, middle or end of it? Investing broadly at the beginning of a crisis that has the signs of being deep is less advised.
Wouldn't be anything too new:
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/04/24/306592297...
As is too often the case, the cost of getting caught with their hands in the cookie jar are dwarfed by the savings over time so no reason to think they will avoid doing similar things in the future.
This is the real take away, imo. It seems like a controlled, insider effort to combat wage growth.
I essentially didn’t get a pay raise after a year of stellar performance reviews because of inflation, and with these layoffs I’m no longer in a position of bargaining power to ask for more.
No new layoffs, but the 18k is the collective total and it's being spread out so long because of Amazon leadership incompetence and world wide labor laws differing.
This looks like a coordinated "attack" where companies and government colluded against the common folk. There's a win-win for them. Companies will start reducing salaries since there'll be more supply of workers, and the government will say "we promise to lower inflation" as campaign slogan.
What you're theorizing might still be happening (inflation looks like it's been controlled for the last few months, but layoffs continue), but lowering inflation is more than PR.
I don't think all these companies really need to lay people off though, they're just using 'everyone else is doing it' as an excuse to get away with it and juice up their stock price.
Wouldn’t the contracted firm be doing the layoff not the tech comp?
Interesting take!
OTOH, not all full time roles have an actual human assigned. They could also be budgeted for, but not filled yet. Post 2008, managers usually kept a couple of unfilled roles for events like this.