Paradox68 OP t1_je7t9kp wrote on March 30, 2023 at 1:01 AM

Reply to comment by juniorlaxma in Anyone else think AMZN is going to pop off tomorrow? by Paradox68

Where are you pulling this number? 50,000 employees? What departments? Which employees? Do you even understand the logistics that must go into layoffs to ensure it’s a good move for the business? Do you even understand the amount of money that is spent researching that data before they even come to a decision?

50,000 people out of a job for what? I agree that “trimming the fat” occasionally is completely necessary, if not, mandatory for a business to succeed, but you can’t just look at it like it’s a singular data point. “Well on average the employees there make $100,000/yr so if we cut 50,000 jobs we’ll be up $5,000,000,000 a year in revenue!” Has too many fallacies and oversimplifications to comment on.

There are a lot of other, more effective measures a business can take on such a massive operational scale to cut costs.

d3nv3rite t1_je8gj3i wrote on March 30, 2023 at 4:14 AM

Do you work for Amazon? I am a consultant hired by Fortune 500 companies to help them plan layoffs. You would be surprised how bloated some companies got during the last few years, as hiring shortages caused them to hoard talent. Many of the positions that should be eliminated include excess layers of management. Did you know Amazon has 12 layers of management between an hourly worker & the CEO? That is a lot of "middle management" that don't create value to customers, but instead spend their time in meetings with other middle managers. These administrative and program management roles can actually slow the organization down because the chain of approvals gets too big for decision-making to occur in an efficient manner.

I'm not advocating for layoffs, but I equally disagree with the stance that layoffs are bad. The US government shows how disfunctional things can get when there are too many layers of leadership. My fear with Amazon is they have grown into an organization with too many silos & layers that will prevent them from continuing to innovate effectively. It is apparent to the outside that this is happening, as Amazon hasn't rolled out many new things for customers in recent years except on the AWS front. To fix this, Amazon either needs to split up into separate companies or carefully assess their corporate staffing to ensure the ratio of managers vs productive team members makes sense.

Paradox68 OP t1_je8ho60 wrote on March 30, 2023 at 4:25 AM

First four sentences are entirely anecdotal so I’ll ignore it entirely.

-12 layers thing is semi bullshit. Every company has these layers you’re describing, they’re called departments. Even at my job, we have my local team, then we have the manager of that team, then we have the department lead, then that guy has a manager who is the director, then that director has a team of other directors and all those directors are part of another team and that team reports up to either another department or the C-level, depending on how big the company is. Let’s make this clear, I’m NOT saying that companies aren’t bloated, they are. I know that, everyone knows that. The thing you’re not understanding is that if there are departments dedicated to researching and actioning the effectiveness of layoffs, then it becomes a non-issue for the business because it’s ever-changing. It’s obviously too complex of an issue to encapsulate here, or to come up with one cut and dry solution, so I guess I don’t understand why you think you know more than the people at Amazon who are actually paid to do this.

Still waiting on an answer from the other guy on where he pulled 50,000 from