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Comment by andsoitis | Hacker News Reader

> These aren't "job losses", these are "firings".

While both terms mean someone no longer has a job, they differ in cause and implication.

Firing is when employer terminates someone for cause, i.e. employee did something wrong or didn't meet expectations. Job loss is a broader term, simply means the person no longer has a job, for any reason, but typically layoffs, downsizing, restructuring, plant closure, or being fired.

So I'm not really upset about saying job losses in this case rather than firing, because the employees who lost their jobs didn't do anything wrong and I think it is useful to be able to distinguish.

The phrase that DOES irk me is "let go" vs. "fire". Now that is a weasel phrasing.

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"job loss" is purposefully passive to remove culpability from the entity (Amazon) that is making the active choice to terminate these people's jobs.

It's the same as language like "officer involved shooting" to avoid saying "an officer shot a person" or calling a "murder" a "loss of life".

> purposefully passive to remove culpability from the entity (Amazon) that is making the active choice to terminate these people's jobs.

Opening line in the article: "Amazon has confirmed it plans to cut thousands of jobs, saying it needs to be "organised more leanly" to seize the opportunity provided by artificial intelligence (AI)."

And the statement from Amazon uses the phrase "we are reducing..."

Yes we’re discussing the headline

> Yes we’re discussing the headline

Ah I see, your beef is with the BBC, not Amazon.

It can be both. In this case it is. BBC for the sanewhashing of insanity, and Amazon for continuing to inflate this giant AI bubble.

There is enough people who don’t read articles just headlines whose world view can be changed with this.

In Hungary, where I’m originally from, one of my friends sent me an article, which was about immigration in 2015, because she thought that the local district government wanted to move “migrants” (dog whistle for non white people over there) into her district. The headline said that, the body said the exact opposite… and it worked.

Also there are a ton of comments here, on Reddit, and really everywhere, that makes it quite obvious that a lot of people don’t read just headlines.

Right and that is different that passive wording of "job loss" used above?

The more important thing it does though is remove culpability from the employee who doesn't have a job anymore. That person will be looking for a job (we assume, perhaps a few will just retire or something else). The companies they apply at will want to know why they no longer work at Amazon - there is a big difference between "I was sexually harassing my coworkers" (pick a crime, sexual harassment seems to be the big one these days), and "Amazon decided they didn't need my job done any more".

That's why "layoff" is the right word to use. It makes it clear that it was Amazon's decision and not through any direct fault of the employee.

Yes. Job loss is what the employee experiences, not the employer.

The owner of the employer company just experienced a vacation in space, renting an entire European country for a wedding, etc.

Some employees are going to experience losing their housing. Losing their health benefits while sick. Children will be moved from their friends/schools. Some will lose their careers as they won't find new related work quick enough and will have to take whatever they can get for their next job.

While the owner vacations in space for fun.

Those are unrelated, the same would happen regardless if it was owned by millions via their pension plans or a few billionaires, both are equally greedy and immediately move their investments for 1% higher returns, the CEO's at these companies are servants to that inhuman level of greed that comes from dissociated masses of people being owners.

And said greed (by both founder and shareholders) produced a company that so enriched them BY BEING FAVORED BY BILLIONS(!) of customers worldwide to provide access to range goods with a convenience, price, and speed experienced only by the wealthy just a few years earlier :).

Ugh, Capitalism.

Yes the wealthy, famous for their love of cheap 'from China to the landfill' goods and life risking fake fuses, counterfeit Calvin Klein underwear, and supplements spiked with hidden drugs or that are just plain toxic.

Ugh capitalism is right.

https://www.cspi.org/article/fda-alert-supplements-amazon-po... https://www.consumerreports.org/health/fda-finds-hidden-drug... https://kagi.com/search?q=amazon+fake+fuses

I am confuse. I don't know how much Amazon cares about what's sold on their site (probably more than eBay?), but they have most liberal return policy on the internet, and from the one seller I've personally met, they're hard on vendors.

Bad products and services exists in all markets, choice is the cure.

Is it Amazon branded products your upset with? I guess don't buy them? I genuinely do not understand your argument.

Funny, every company prior to around 2010 the owners felt the pain of the employees and were seen as at least partially human. Sure post 2010 an anti-societal cohesion element of 'maximum extraction now' has taken over the ownership and political classes trying to speedrun societal breakdown/collapse, but that was not the norm or acceptable (you would have even be ostracized from the ownership/capital class) for all of my life prior to 2010.

No employer is going to discuss reasons for a termination. Too much potential liability.

Most all will answer whether or not it was "with cause" if someone calls them up, though? Specifically because they have to if the caller is about unemployment, no?

I'm not in HR but as I understand it most companies will not say anything other than confirming dates of employment.

They won't confirm if the termination was the choice of the employee or the company? Doesn't that have implications for unemployment benefits?

Most employers won't confirm the reason for termination with random callers who are verifying employment history.

Unemployment insurance is a bit different. When a former employee files for unemployment benefits then the state will notify the last employer, and that employer can dispute the claim if the termination was for cause. In practice many employers don't dispute unemployment claims even for employees whom they terminated for performance reasons because it's not worth the hassle.

Makes sense.

The rate that employers pay for unemployment insurance is tied to the number of claims. While they wouldn't dispute in bulk for layoffs, it is worth the hassle when it's for cause.

If your talking about employment verification, no they don't say why. Just confirm dates of employment.

If you get fired you can lie about it. No one can find out.

I confess this surprises me. I didn't think they had to give specific details, but I thought they had to at least confirm whose decision it was for the termination.

In most cases when a company wants to fire someone they will first pull them into an office and tell them they are allowed to submit their resignation right now. If this happens it is normally best for you to accept that offer as then they will say you left in good standing. At least this way you can find a new job.

There is the possible exception that you already have enough evidence that you were going to sue them anyway, then you can take that you were fired to your lawyer (you should already have a lawyer and gotten their advice on the situation). However I don't think this has ever been the case for anyone.

The other exception is when the police are there and will arrest you as part of firing you. I'm not aware of this happening, but it seems like it probably has at some point (like once per decade across all jobs in the world)

I'm fine with the idea that they won't share specifically that they fired someone for a specific reason. The surprising part, to me, is that they can't share if it was company's decision to end the relationship. My understanding was that if you just up and quit, then you don't qualify for unemployment benefits.

And I hasten to add that I'm fine being wrong on this point. Surprise can last a bit, though. :D

What they tell unemployment can be different from random "companies". Large companies have a policy of only given dates worked and "left in good standing" (or rarely not - but not is something they can be sued for and so rarely given because best case it will cost them half a million in lawyers fees if they win in court)

Makes perfect sense.

No, don’t resign instead of getting terminated. The reason they offer that is gets them off the hook for unemployment and makes any lawsuit harder. It’s 100% upside to company.

No one is going to know you got fired, if they call the company, it’s just dates and title, probably say in good standing.

It’s in old company best interest for you to get a new job because jobless people start talking to lawyers when they get desperate.

> makes any lawsuit harder. It’s 100% upside to company.

That is why they do it. However you still should accept the offer unless you are going to sue them which most are not. Just find a new job and move on. Try to do better.

> No one is going to know you got fired, if they call the company, it’s just dates and title, probably say in good standing.

The good standing is not something you want to risk. They have the ability to say not in good standing and might even have the obligation to say that to some people (depending on local laws, but if it wasn't in good standing it is at least unethical to say it was). By resigning first everyone agrees that it was in good standing and you all move on (even though you are clearly cutting the line).

Again, this assumes that like most people you won't be suing. Likely you know you screwed up (though perhaps you don't agree it is bad enough to be fired). For most it just isn't worth trying to fight it out. If you are an exception than by all means refuse - but be prepared for the consequences.

Companies rarely answer "Eligible for rehire" or "Departed in Good Standing" because that's lawsuit bait, at least in the United States. Companies don't answer questions about your employment because companies have gotten sued and lost unless they have clear evidence.

Worrying about company asking "Good standing" is like when Elementary Teacher talking about your permanent record. It does not exist.

I should find it more amusing than I do that I largely still fall for stuff like the permanent record idea. I definitely fell for it, though.

>No, don’t resign instead of getting terminated. The reason they offer that is gets them off the hook for unemployment and makes any lawsuit harder. It’s 100% upside to company.

Depends on whether they're offering something, otherwise yeah it's worse for you unless you suspect they have evidence of you embezzling company funds or something.

Companies don't have to answer any questions about your employment, they are just nice about it.

Whose decision could reveal something about employee and if employee thinks it's bullshit, that's defamation lawsuit possibility. I even know companies who bosses talk good about people they have fired because having ex-employee stew is not good. Get them a new job and move on.

When employers do a reference check, the reference has a choice of:

1) Sticking to the legally safe answer of only confirming dates

2) Confirm dates and share a few anecdotes about how the person was good to work with

If a previous employer chooses only to confirm dates, and refuses to answer any other questions, it's often a way of signaling something bad went down but you can't talk about it.

That doesn't mean the hiring manager can't go through informal backchannels to find out.

Ehh I got fired once, the new hiring manager would have to know the manager I reported to be able to find out. I actually had a different manager at the same company ask me if I was interested in coming back becasue he didn't know a different manager fired me.

You need to be memorable enough too.

Backchanel is not really a real concern unless you did something really fucked up.

Otherwise who do you think knows?

It depends. If you're in a niche industry/specialization then people might know each other.

It's also a total gut-punch to employees. "We had a great quarter!... not a good enough though, so GTFO"

I can only imagine what this will do to morale. If even positive quarters means job cuts, why even try to have a positive quarter.

I dunno, I got used to the weekly beatings. You could arque that if you understand what brings the most business value and deliver that repeatedly, you're pretty safe from being fired and arguably you'd know how to run your own business if needed.

If someone, say did a great job of updating API documentation that can be fully automated now, that's not good enough nowadays. I realise that's not exactly fair because the capitalists / shareholders 'only' have to have to have money in order to receive compensation, and you as a labourer face increasing demands. If you don't like the balance of power you find a niche / leverage as a laborer or you switch to being a capitalist eventually.

What a cute naive thinking of life.

If you truly believe the best people are not layed off from corporations, you must be extremely young and just starting out. Corporations are a lot less rational than you imply

>You could arque that if you understand what brings the most business value and deliver that repeatedly, you're pretty safe from being fired and arguably you'd know how to run your own business if needed.

It's not the 2010's anymore. You're not fired because you did a bad job or even because you weren't productive enough. You're fired in a larger cultural wave to try and remove American labor from the American economy as they push everything overseas and pretend it's about "efficiency with AI". Nothing is hiring outside of hospitality right now.

>you switch to being a capitalist eventually.

Hope you have generational wealth. Otherwise that "capitalist" position is you delivering doordash just to survive.

>It's also a total gut-punch to employees. "We had a great quarter!... not a good enough though, so GTFO"

If you take the comment about "AI" at face value, isn't that exactly what you'd expect? If a textile mill is making record profits because of new textile machinery, would you consider it reasonable for the business to keep the old workers around, even though they're not needed anymore? Yes, it always sucks to lose a job, but I don't see how Amazon did them dirty or even broke some sort of informal contract.

They absolutely didn't. It's within Amazon's legal rights to cut as many employees as they like for any reason (besides a protected one).

With that said, I would consider doing layoffs after a profitable quarter to be anti-social / anti-culture. It creates fear and uncertainty in the organization which will cause people to move to 'cash checks until I am fired then I'll leverage this to get a job somewhere else' versus trying hard to make the company their career where they put down roots.

In my opinion, chasing ever increasing profitability as a tech company is cannibalizing future earnings. By cutting over and over in pursuit of more profit, you are trading compound earnings (ie: create new products) for money today by injecting fear into your 'innovation centers'.

>With that said, I would consider doing layoffs after a profitable quarter to be anti-social / anti-culture. It creates fear and uncertainty in the organization which will cause people to move to 'cash checks until I am fired then I'll leverage this to get a job somewhere else' versus trying hard to make the company their career where they put down roots.

So going back to the textile mill example above, what should the owner do? Keep the workers around even though they're not needed until the next recession, and only then fire them? If it's a particularly profitable industry, it might even still be profitable even with a recession, so is amazon on the hook for decades, until there's some sort of industry-wide crisis (think the one that hit the American auto industry in 2008), and by then it's too late because upstarts without the burden of older employees have already overtaken them?

Train them to run and maintain the new machines? Find a new business opportunity and have them work on that? All of the above with an optional buyout?

They should cut people when they have a down quarter, a project fails and there is no where for those people to transfer to, or poor performance.

Tossing people out as a giant tech company after a profitable quarter is non-sense. They have money to be innovative, why are they choosing not to push that back into more attempts at products.

People expect bad news if the company gets bad news. If a company cuts after good news, people are going to lose faith in either their truthfulness (ie: are they cooking the books), their loyalty to employees, or both.

>If you take the comment about "AI" at face value, isn't that exactly what you'd expect?

Sure.

Too bad I don't take it at face value and know this is just more outsourcing that's smokescreened under AI. Just check their hiring in earnings calls and see if that's actually going down. Amazon did them dirty and lied about why they aren't needed.

"culpability" is also purposefully loaded. It's not wrong for a company to decide that certain jobs are no longer needed. How they handle that could be more or less considerate of the human impact, but there's really no way to do it that won't cause some some upset to the terminated employee.

If a person fails to understand they are essentially working for a feudal lord when they sign up to work for Amazon, the educational system has failed.

In the modern capitalist world, entire industries are shipped over seas or simply vanish.

Question. Why is it the shareholders of AMZNs responsibility to keep people employed?

Whenever there are layoffs of a major company, like half the comments here always bemoan the particular wording the article or company uses to describe the layoffs. It's a pointless exercise IMO (though I agree with you, ironically "firing" is less accurate than "let go").

Layoffs suck. Companies should be judged by their actions (e.g. severance, who is being laid off, etc.) and just ignore the words.

Well their actions suck and their reasoning is probably a lie. So... what now? I already cancelled my Prime subscription this year.

> Firing is when employer terminates someone for cause, i.e. employee did something wrong or didn't meet expectations.

This meaning is present in many people's minds. It is not present in many people's minds or any dictionary I saw ever.

to remove someone from their job, either because they have done something wrong or badly, or as a way of saving the cost of employing them[1]

The act or an instance of dismissing someone from a job.[2]

the action of forcing somebody to leave their job[3]

And so on.

[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fire

[2] https://www.thefreedictionary.com/firing

[3] https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...

counterpoint:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fire#Verb

4. (transitive, employment) To terminate the employment contract of (an employee), especially for cause (such as misconduct, incompetence, or poor performance).

OK. The meaning appeared in 1 dictionary I saw ever now. And it said firing was not termination for cause solely.

> Firing is when employer terminates someone for cause, i.e. employee did something wrong or didn't meet expectations.

AFAIK you are using the term "for cause" incorrectly. Firing "for cause" is usually more serious than simply firing for poor performance or similar. It's usually for something like breach of contract, for getting in legal trouble, for theft, wilful misconduct, etc. It also usually results in losing severance, options, etc.

Simple firing for poor performance is not firing "for cause".

That’s what I was thinking but I looked it up in the dictionary and appears that firing is already pretty neutral yet picked up the negative connotation, presumably because most people consider firings to be with cause. Even ‘layoffs’ has picked up a negative connotation. I’m not sure if it’s possible for language to to continuously outrun the associations, I guess we either police the language more fervently or continue inventing new words.

Part of me hates the capriciousness of randomly selected layoffs but it’s done for a few main reasons, firstly that it’s not exploitable by internal politicking (at least less explicable). Secondly, reduces exposure to lawsuits about performance. Thirdly, reduces reputational damage to those laid off. Of course there is an incredible incentive to lie about the randomness.

The only phrases they should be using are “Amazon lays off 14,000…” or (in the case of with cause) “Amazon fires 14,000…”

To me everything else is weasel words.

> Firing is when employer terminates someone for cause,

People are fired for a cause, namely Amazon needs more profit for its shareholders.

Why is downsizing and an employee’s role no longer being cost effective for the business not considered “cause” for firing?

Cause in this context specifically refers to the employee having done something wrong or illegal and means the employee is guilty of misconduct.

It is very rare for someone that is fired to be "guilty of misconduct," unless you consider poor performance misconduct.

In Britain we have quite strong employment laws and a bit less of a ruthless corporate culture, so in many sectors it's fairly uncommon for people to be terminated for poor performance, so I suspect "misconduct" is a higher percentage of overall firings here.

Yeah for sure. Unfortunately in the US it’s not uncommon for companies to find “a pattern of behavior” or “less than stellar work” that is enough to justify not giving you your severance, but also not too severe that they can’t be blamed for never bringing it up and putting you on a PIP (performance improvement plan, not sure if that’s a term in other countries).

In the US, if your employment is terminated for cause, i.e. due to your underperformance at work, then you are not eligible to receive unemployment benefits from the government.

There could be other conditions too depending on whatever employment agreement exists, but the point is to determine if an employee’s lack of performance caused their employment to be terminated or something external to the employee caused their employment to be terminated.

> In the US, if your employment is terminated for cause, i.e. due to your underperformance at work, then you are not eligible to receive unemployment benefits from the government.

You meant i.e. or e.g.?

Under performance may be considered termination for cause in your state. It is not generally.

IANAL, but I believe "cause" means "the employee gave the company cause to fire them". Poor performance, bad conduct, etc.

It's not so much that "cause" means anything as that "for cause" has a specific meaning.

With cause think crimes or near crimes. Sexually harassment of a coworker, taking things from the warehouse...

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