Comment by jader201 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jader201 | Hacker News Reader

> Amazon is trimming its head count after it went on a hiring spree during the Covid-19 pandemic. The company’s global workforce swelled to more than 1.6 million by the end of 2021, up from 798,000 in the fourth quarter of 2019.

This makes the news a bit less shocking, I think. Many tech companies are suffering — and laying off — due to the economy, and didn’t “swell” quite to the level Amazon did during the pandemic.

While I’m sure the economy is still certainly a factor here, it would make sense for a company that needed to expand to meet the sudden demands brought on by the pandemic to need to course-correct once that died down.

Especially since it was felt:

> primarily in its human resources and stores divisions

Both of these probably had to ramp up disproportionately to meet the sudden demands of the pandemic.

To be clear, this is still sad/unfortunate news for the affected folks. But I believe it's not quite the shock other news of layoffs has been.

“Many tech companies are suffering — and laying off — due to the economy”

That’s one way to characterize companies making billions of dollars in profits.

Amazon actually "only" earned $2.5 billion profit in Q3 2022, which is pretty low considering their size. Compare to their layoff buddies (and apparently "doomed company") Meta, whose profit was $5.6 billion.

Amazon intentionally doesn’t make a profit. It’s an excellent tax avoidance strategy and since their shareholders are OK with it a fantastic way to put their competition out of business.

a lot of tech companies approached hiring from an anti-competitive perspective. they hired staff they didn't need, in order to keep them off the market and pull the oxygen out of the room for startups that might eventually threaten their dominance in the 5-10 year timescale. the old "rest and vest" type thing. companies are now reducing headcount down to a level that's more commensurate with actual business needs.

same thing happened in the 2000s... mass layoffs resulted in a wave of new startups and competitors in the 5-10 year timescale. forest fires clean out the accumulated undergrowth and allow a new lifecycle to begin. not to imply that it sucks any less for anyone who lost their job, but, this is a release of anticompetitive pressure and it'll probably be a long-term net positive for the market overall.

I'm not sure that's true. I know it sounds like it could be true (darn those big COs!) but, is it actually true? I don't think it is.

That's right. I got hired in April 2021 and by the time I quit in August 2022, more than 50% of employees were newer than me (they have a tool called oldfart, where you can check your seniority).

It's a turnover like you have in fast food. How can anyone be productive in such an environment?

The majority of those million+ workers are working jobs as an option against fast food. Productive is 'pick thing out of bin, place in box', not creativity/etc.

Don't confuse the relatively tiny tech company wrapped inside the worlds largest logistics and fulfillment organization.

It looked as if the poster was in the tech arm, not the logistics arm of the company. Low-level jobs are scripted everywhere, fast food or not.

The oldfart tool shows your seniority across the entire company, not just at your role.

Eh, it's misleading because it is not all tech. Drivers, warehouse, EAs, etc. Most tech companies are heavily dominated by tech employees, Amazon is different in that regard and given the pandemic saw a surge in demand for shipping, it seems entirely tenable for the company to grow so expediently.

Amazon is an order of magnitude larger than other tech companies in terms of headcount because they also have all their drivers, distribution centers, fulfillment centers, Whole Foods, Etc.

Amazon is the closest thing we've got to Buy n Large from WALL-E.

I think most people here are more interested in how many full time salaried employees Amazon has and what percentage do these layoffs contain? And then additionally how many people that are in product/engineering affected?

> Many tech companies are suffering

Do they really? I regularly find 30% cost optimisation potentials in large organisations. It is just easier to fire people than optimise workloads and infrastructure.

On the other side, I haven't seen companies giving extra bonuses when the economy is booming.

If modern corporations disbursed the profits from excess production back into society, we’d all be working a few days a week at most as Keynes had predicted I suspect.

However it turns out that’s not the case. Most of this seems to be profit grabbing while the market expectation is, “economy bad.”

I guess we’ll find out in hindsight.

> On the other side, I haven't seen companies giving extra bonuses when the economy is booming.

I'm sure horse and sparrow economics[0] will start working any day now...

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics Mr. David Stockman has said that supply-side economics was merely a cover for the trickle-down approach to economic policy—what an older and less elegant generation called the horse-and-sparrow theory: "If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows."

> "If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.”

sounds like a framing error to me. “Trickle-down” is a term used by critics to reframe the creation of wealth as essentially a zero-sum game. The same Wikipedia article[0] cites Thomas Sowell [1] and I find him more compelling.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics

1. https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents...

Sounds like you have a common mis-conception that a lot of people who entered the workforce after 2008 have: that bonuses are a given, and part of your salary. Lot's o' people this year won't be getting their bonuses because companies aren't doing well, sales slowed, etc. The very definition of a BONUS is that's it's something you get when the times are good.

(I'm sure it's the same with Stock Options, that people just assumed they'd go up, probably why all the memes about Total Comp are all over social media?)

Stock Options and Restricted Stock Units are different things and even without the value going up, they have an intrinsic cash value.

And what memes about Total Comp?

My main comment was about Bonuses, btw. which, as I stated aren't guaranteed and are typically paid when companies are doing well.

Options and even RSUs only have value if they go up above initial grant or strike price.

I have been in the "workforce" since 1995. What do I know about this, right? I never said what you are claiming. I simply stated the obvious. Companies exposing bad economy on employees while never give out more when economy is doing great. This is in fact true. What is the motivation and what should we do about it is a different question.

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