Amazon Says It Will Cut 14,000 Corporate Roles To Remove Layers 50
Amazon said on Tuesday it would reduce its corporate workforce by approximately 14,000 roles as part of an effort to remove bureaucracy and organizational layers. Beth Galetti, the company's senior vice president of people experience and technology, told employees in a memo that the cuts followed earlier work to strengthen teams by reducing layers and increasing ownership.
The company said it would offer most affected employees 90 days to find new roles internally and that recruiting teams would prioritize internal candidates. Those unable to find positions at Amazon will receive severance pay, outplacement services and health insurance benefits, the memo added.
The company said it would offer most affected employees 90 days to find new roles internally and that recruiting teams would prioritize internal candidates. Those unable to find positions at Amazon will receive severance pay, outplacement services and health insurance benefits, the memo added.
Oh, the middlemanity ! (Score:2)
People who want to manage want to manage from the top.
No-one wants to be a sad middle manager.
Re: Oh, the middlemanity ! (Score:5, Insightful)
In many ways, sadly, the only way to succeed in corporate America is to eventually become a manager. Outside of startups and specialty organizations, people who build things rarely get compensated well.
Re: Oh, the middlemanity ! (Score:5, Insightful)
A person with a 'management' title has no theoretical limit to the top end of their salary. Everyone else does.
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"Corporate America" typically has non-management advancement tracks. When I worked for Siemens, engineers were well compensated, senior engineers were more well compensated, and principal engineers made more than the managers they grudgingly agreed to work for.
Re: Oh, the middlemanity ! (Score:5, Funny)
I first read it as remove lawyers.
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Re:Oh, the middlemanity ! (Score:5, Insightful)
No-one wants to be a sad middle manager.
I've done my time in the trenches of middle management. One thing you can be sure of: you don't get rid of bureaucracy by firing middle management. Middle management is a symptom of bureaucracy. My time in that job was dealing with all the utterly cursed shite so that my programmers could get on with programming.
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Yeah ive seen a creep of management activity into non management jobs. it's usually presented as some sort of grooming ceremony to the victim can eventually ascend to the good life. Now we have guys with engineering titles who don't code or architect, helpdesk guys with ca degrees building services, eng 3 developers doing architectural work.
They're just pushing expensive labor down on people who make less money. It works for awhile but there's only so much code written between helpdesk tickets and meetin
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I am currently a middle manager, and relish my role of protecting the team from the political nonsense that goes on. Knowing that they can do their jobs because I run interference for them, is literally what motivates me to work every day. That, and helping make the architecture sound. But #1 is the team.
Re: Oh, the middlemanity ! (Score:2)
âoeIncrease Ownership âoe is corporate speak for âoeyou have more responsibility and more work for the same payâ
But it sounds empowering and cuddly!
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People who want to make stuff stay out of management. People who want to manage want to manage from the top. No-one wants to be a sad middle manager.
Are they really middle-men if the 600,000 below them are replaced with robots?
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Cut 14,000 Corporate Roles... (Score:5, Insightful)
...To Remove Lawyers.
So much better.
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Re: Cut 14,000 Corporate Roles... (Score:2)
Do it with a steamroller for a flatter organizational structure.
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...To Remove Lawyers.
So much better.
Don't bet on even 2% of them being lawyers. This is nothing less than slashing anything they can to endure the current administration. They have to be more careful at the warehouse level because that could affect sales. We've already noticed an increase in processing times for many items to the point that it's becoming no difference between ordering it from a local store or Amazon, and that's if Amazon isn't more expensive already. Yes, Amazon's prices have risen steadily as well.
Right now Amazon is in
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Yep i remember when ordering online was like a super power. Frooogle being the go-to, amazon being where you went next, and all of it being easier and cheaper than going to the store. Most people were still wasting time with best buy and self checkout. My wife and i keep talking about maybeeee we should cancel prime, the conversation is becoming more frequent. Not thinking my subscription is gonna survive to 2026.
We're starting to pirate things we have available on steaming from time to time. Only even
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The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Score:1)
Re: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Score:2)
Excellent (Score:2)
But could you add some roles in customer service instead then maybe? Getting anywhere with them is impossible.
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I'm legitimately "Steve" at a much smaller tech company. I also do product management (lol) and QA (a cursory check before the customers really QA it for us).
I will never get any help, the only answer is to build out a magical LLM automation at the same time as responding to a flood of emails/tickets/meetings/calls.
I've learned not to ask for help as that turns into a homework assignment with due dates.
At least I still have a well paying tech job in 2025, until the house of cards collapses.
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Customer service is getting so bad that both my bank and my real estate agent nearly fumbled out buying my home, my last auto insurance claim was nearly worthless when applying my hourly pay to the amount of time i spent making the claim, there are a few businesses that have made me waste time tying to give them money.
In the past i used to just not pay if anyone gave me a hassle paying a bill, i'd say we've been on the phone an hour, i'm gonna set a timer for 15 minutes and that's how long you have until t
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As predicted (Score:2)
14k is a lot of dead meat in corporate layers.... (Score:2)
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Things ran great for most part, management just wouldn't fire the slackers ! Brought in 5 supervisors aka "babysitters" who knew nothing about running the job.
If you are a manager, and hire five managers below you, then it increases your importance. The optimal strategy is to hire as many people as you can. If they are useless, that is a bonus (because then you have to hire more people to get the job done).
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The thing about most management layers is you don't need them most of the time.
If you are the kind of organization that is able to retain staff, ie working conditions are not shit, pay is reasonable etc, you end up with experienced staff. Experienced staff can keep the trains running on time with minimal 'help' from management.
Were middle management matters, and this only applies to 'effective middle managment' which is all but certain as to if it is effective at Amazon or anywhere else is adaptation. You
Re:14k is a lot of dead meat in corporate layers.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Found that out years ago during layoffs.....company runs just fine or better w/o all the fluff. Comes down to who actually is "hands on" in dealing your product whatever it is ! Kinda like working at Merial on 2nd shift and I was the lead in running the area after supervisor left. Things ran great for most part, management just wouldn't fire the slackers ! Brought in 5 supervisors aka "babysitters" who knew nothing about running the job. For the most part they let me do my job and keep things going. But 5 supervisors @ $70k = $350k added to the overhead / costs.
I've worked in both the public and private sector (and education, which is a weird mix of the two at the tertiary level) and I can honestly say I've found more dead wood and Jobsworths in large private sector outfits than anywhere in the public sector.
It's much easier to hide in a large company but even worse, it's much easier to make yourself an irremovable cog by getting yourself a single task that means you have to be involved, preferably without any real work. The holy grail of this is to be some kind of gatekeeper so people need your authorisation to do their jobs. This kind of role I've found occupied by dedicated brown nosers and as long as the company is making money no-one bothers looking at people like that.. Hell even when companies are not making money they often overlook them because they suck up to senior management.
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Good News? (Score:3)
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That number was "the first round of layoffs". My guess is, these 14000 are the second round.
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Of course, today's actual story about 14k won't get nearly as much readership as yesterday's rumor about 30k, since now it's 'old news.' Or better yet, people will just assume both, like your post.
Read this as "lawyers" (Score:3)
... but alas. :(
"Manager" means different things (Score:2)
Just because someone has a "Manager" title doesn't mean they aren't doing anything besides telling people what to do. Good management is intimately involved in the actual work. If done right, they are in the manager role because they have a higher-level mastery of the work and can better coordinate what needs to be done while also focusing their efforts on the most complex and highest-value tasks. If that's not happening, it may not necessarily be the manager's fault so much as bureaucracy the company foist
Because Jeff... (Score:2)
Because Jeff needs the money to buy another superyacht, and perhaps a few hypercars with the change.
Amazon does not have layers (Score:1)
They are not a company that has a bunch of managers sitting around doing nothing.
So one of two things is going on. First they just announced a bunch of layoffs that they a
Re: Amazon does not have layers (Score:2)
Maybe it's just me (Score:4, Interesting)
But, when someone in your company has a title like "senior vice president of people experience and technology" - it seems to imply some of the layers which should be reduced should be peeled right off the top?
The economy... (Score:2)