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Comment by sys_64738 | Hacker News Reader

A business is run to maximize shareholder value. Cutting costs is part of that equation.

Also, it's worth remembering that the number of Amazon shareholders, and the number of people impacted by Amazon's stock price as a component of index funds, is vastly larger than the number of Amazon employees.

It's not really maximizing shareholder value though. In this case its like cutting off your leg and claiming you lost weight.

It might be. If you pay in stock, juicing the stock number of you can could save thousands on the backend in wages paid out in total shares.

if the employees that were cut were working on a product that was losing money, then its more akin to liposuction. Its not about the employee's skills either, it's the business unit. If you start cutting database or network engineers on the AWS team, now we're talking about cutting off limbs.

Put another way, lots of startups are failing or are going to fail in this environment. Layoffs are like killing "internal startups" that aren't moneymakers.

Why is it better to lay people off than to just put that labor on something more profitable? If labor isn't productive that's not a labor issue, thats a management issue from them mismanaging their labor. It's a shame these workers have to suffer from being mismanaged.

>If labor isn't productive that's not a labor issue, thats a management issue from them mismanaging their labor

You're assuming that any group of talented people can have a 100% track record of success. Some startups (or projects) just fail and it has nothing to do with the talent.

You gotta take bets on new products/markets and sometimes they don't pan out. Sometimes it's just a market issue. There's not always a way to know if it was going to fail beforehand either. If we want innovation, then unfortunately I think these types of sh*tshows are part of the deal, although a 17,000 layoff is pretty gnarly.

Amazon is one of the largest online retailers, and one of the largest vendors of compute capacity to other companies. They are better positioned to see a downturn coming than almost anyone else. What makes you think they got it wrong?

I don't think they got it wrong, I just think layoffs are foolish because staff generate the profits for your business. Does Amazon really need to cut costs? For 2022, revenue was up 15% year over year. The only thing bad going on with Amazon in this economy currently is their stock price, not their profitability or how much cash they have or how many workers they are able to afford.

More like losing weight and claiming that it's become easier to walk.

People are acting like workers are belly fat, I see them as bone and muscle and organs. A business cannot generate a profit without its workers performing profitable work. If the workers aren't doing something profitable, look at your managers dictating that work, not the labor that is along for the ride.

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