well for a trillion dollar company, it's kind of hard to suggest "if we are to succeed", but that's not the fault of your PR statement template. It's just plain impossible to pass off "we need to make cuts" when you make that much money.
At what point (revenue/profit/capital) does a company become required to become a jobs program? I apologize for the inflammatory language in my question, but I genuinely can't distinguish it from your perspective.
I don't see a way to spin that, so I'd rather they be straight with me. Product X isn't make enough money to justify costs of labor, we are cutting expenses to it. Goodbye.
Amazon tends to have good severance so I'm not actually terrified of the engineers going homeless on the streets, but it's more of the way everything is done. You tend to get zero notice for it, you're cut off immediately from all your chats and emails, and you go through the normal charade with recruiters ready to talk about how sorry they feel just as their own studio laid off the last month. You're basically treated as a criminal that needs to be cut off ASAP despite providing value for months/years and you go back to more false platitudes and the usual annoying interview rituals where you pretend you totally care about the company and need to be humble about salary despite that being a big reason (or maybe only reason) you even looked at them.
I'm just tired of all the fakeness.
>use this sort of messaging.
They are free to message it however they want. Doesn't mean I'll believe it's the real reason they did it. I somehow doubt they will get better free games for consumers (or any) as a result of this layoff.
The most likely and boring reason is that it's just more industry shrinking in response to the economy. Just because Amazon can afford to keep things running doesn't mean they won't penny pinch.
I don't understand why it's so hard to be frank. We're not dealing with children here.
Maybe you should read the above quote again.
And again, "if we are to succeed", yeah, as if Amazon is going to fail if they don't make all the profits in every sector.
The weasel words here are the point. I'm tired of them.
that's the part you're conveniently leaving out.
Indeed, if amazon paid entire divisions of people to sit on their hands in areas they've decided not to pursue (and thus don't generate revenue from) then it would be very hard for them to succeed at remaining solvent.