No disagreements with the article. Best to be clear eyed as this comes down the pipe. Getting told 'we will fire you as soon as we can' is not a great workplace, but the bigger indictment of management here is that they have no plan for growth. If your people are more productive, you could invest that in more ambitious projects if you had any good ideas about new opportunities.

You look at Andy Jassy's company wide memo referenced in the article and it starts with 'we are the world's largest start up', followed by claims of increased productivity that will be applied toward cost cutting instead of growth. Most VC's would pass on a 'start up' that has such an apparent no/slow growth mentality.