Maybe This Is Too Cool

Strange, it was at the top of mine and now I don't see it on the first five pages. Guess it got evaporated.

They don't want the unwashed peons to know how things really work in big-tech-land, in fact, capitalism-land.

You're better off emailing mods to inquire.

A frequent reason is the flamewar indicator lighting off, where comments > votes. Though this particular post seems to be running healthily under that ratio. Probably member flags, for whatever reason.

The title immediately annoys me as being excessively vague, FWIW.

... and having read most of the article ... despite my own strong aversion to Amazon, Inc., it's a fairly generic sort of corporate-vibe hit piece. There are things I'd criticise Amazon for, or even ways I might spin this piece. The subject and nature of criticism are ... weak sauce.

This looks incredibly bad.

Fundamentally, it doesn't matter if it's irrelevant relative to total budget size, the simple fact is that if you promote a culture of one rule for me, and another for thee then you end up where people couldn't care less about the extra work you want them to do. And that costs you the money. Perception is reality and all that.

Like, it blows my mind that enough people at Amazon thought this was OK as they were laying off loads of people. Clearly the notion of frugality is pretty dead.

I think part of the point is that it doesn’t matter. You can’t preach “frugality” and @we all need to pitch in” and then use private jets and rock concerts for the few at the top. It is hypocritical.

Doesn't really matter. If it's "a drop in the bucket", everyone in the company will think of potential savings in other areas as "a drop in the bucket". This means the cost reduction targets will never be reached. And when employees see and hear this, you'll start to notice it in their productivity as well.

You’re missing the point, which is that the upper execs failing to make any sacrifices while making everyone under them live in fear will make Amazon an objectively lower performing company as morale drops, the best workers leave, and infighting grows.

The fact that this part is objectively a drop in the bucket is how the execs justify it to themselves, but the fact is that Amazon didn’t need to have mass layoffs and doesn’t need to treat its workers with such disdain. Amazon has plenty of money. The parties the execs throw themselves are just one of a thousand ways they are taking that money they save by firing people and funneling it to themselves and the big investors rather than trying to improve the business itself. And it bodes poorly for the company in the long term, but none of the people involved care about that either.

"Old" Hewlett-Packard mandated that each sub-company should not be larger than X people (I think I've seen mentions of X=100 with X=150 being splitting point)

>Like, its not just one big account/corporate structure that allows for sending money from the party account directly to employees?

I think it basically is one big account. At the end of the day it's the total revenues minus the total expenses that gives the total profit, and that profit is used for stock buybacks or dividends or acquisitions. Sure they track revenues and expenses for different areas separately, but since it's one company, it's really all one big account and they can and do give money from one area to another area as needed.