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RaycharlesN t1_ixnvrdb wrote

They’re laying off 10,000 people. Imagine making $12Billion dollars in PROFIT and thinking hmmm all these people I hired are disposable and I can make a little more if I stab them in the back.

Your reward for loyalty and success. People who moved their families, bought homes, cast off by a company which is wildly successful. It’s fucked up.

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capitalism93 t1_ixodw5a wrote

Actually, Amazon had a loss of $5.8 billion dollars in the previous 2 quarters of March (-3.84 billion) and June (-2.03 billion)... https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon-reports-net-loss-of-3-8-billion-in-first-quarter-2022/.

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circ_le_jerk_69 t1_ixp2mho wrote

Also, the layoffs are happening in two of their businesses (consumer and Alexa) which have never been profitable. They have always been money losing businesses that have simply been subsidized by AWS.

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SuchSalad4 t1_ixnxvvr wrote

Humans are disposable batteries to them.

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RaycharlesN t1_ixo0ryr wrote

Imagine making a promise to 10,000 people that they have a job and reneging on it because you want MORE profit. This isn’t because they’re failing or not making a profit, it’s to get more. They’re profitable but to get a little more they’ll throw these people aside and wreck their lives. It’s fucked up.

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SuchSalad4 t1_ixo1y3d wrote

It's what they teach you to do in business school. It's even more sadistic in top MBA programs.

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[deleted] t1_ixoj4p1 wrote

[deleted]

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Journey776 t1_ixo2ycp wrote

Says the person who has taken zero MBA classes

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SuchSalad4 t1_ixo54s4 wrote

I am speaking from experience. I went to WP Carey MBA program and quit in protest because of how vile their practices were.

Bet any amount of money (above $1000) through a proper betting company if you think I'm lying and I will prove it.

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Journey776 t1_ixo5xgv wrote

Lol I did my undergrad at Ross and MBA at Yale and in both schools we were taught the exact opposite

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SuchSalad4 t1_ixo6h9p wrote

Now that I find hard to believe.

They were teaching us how to exploit people to the max. In fact, they gave a prize to a team who, in a theoretical scenario, chose to keep child labor in Africa just to keep a mine going. This was the last straw that broke my back as I had enough of all the Patrick Batemanesque types of people that were there. Professors were talking trash about other universities, students were on a never ending dick measuring contest, etc. I just felt out of place there. I felt bad for the people who were in my team. Several of them got into the MBA and did nothing with it upon graduation and I ended up with better positions than them with my undergrad. I did nearly complete a master's in administration with focus on project management but quit because I'm now semi-retired in my mid 40s.

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Journey776 t1_ixo6s7w wrote

Yeah I’m lying. They actually took us to orphanages and we bought the orphanages, kicked the kids out, and then let’s the kids back in at a room and board rate of $350 a month plus utilities.

Or not all business schools are created equal. Either or.

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SuchSalad4 t1_ixo6ymw wrote

LOL, I still find it hard to believe because almost every single business program I've heard of is mainly focused on maximizing profits for the shareholders, so for you to tell me that there's an altruistic MBA out there is incredibly hard to believe.

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Journey776 t1_ixo845l wrote

Eh my classes were more focused on how to increase profit through growth. They did in our Ops class mention that one way to increase profit was to cut Opex but that there were many other ways and that the Opex cuts are the easy if not myopic choice.

Now every time I see a layoff I just think it’s taking the easy way out.

But I also read Antiwork at work so yeah.

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SuchSalad4 t1_ixobqrb wrote

> focused on how to increase profit through growth

If true, I now feel bad that I made the assumption that all MBAs were shit, because I really wanted to get one. I was just appalled by how terrible the one I went to was.

I also would've imagined that Yale would've been a pinaccle of maximizing profits at all costs. I guess it makes me happy to know that there are other programs that aren't as shitty as the one I went to.

I guess, in the end, my life took me down another path in which I'm quite happy in. I work part time and spend the rest of the time farming/with my kids.

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Journey776 t1_ixoc7c7 wrote

Eh, I’m sure the stereotype exists for a reason. I also just got my MBA, who knows if like in the past it was all about shareholder profit. I know a lot of the older people I talk to that are higher up - so assuming a majority of them have an MBA - like to say how their end goal is maximizing shareholder profit. I just nod along……. Yeahhhhh that’s not really my main goal though.

Sounds like it worked out for ya though. Tbh working part time and then farming and spending it with family sounds idyllic compared to the office politics and all that jazz

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SuchSalad4 t1_ixoq1mr wrote

I'll try to put my ego down and say that I'm very, and perhaps say that I'm extremely, glad you feel this way. It gives me the idea that progress has been made.

Please commend Yale if your truly believe the words you were saying. We need more commendable leadership like this.

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Truth_is_Liberal t1_ixocktw wrote

Dude MBA programs are rife with Chicago School stupidity. They practically worship Milton Friedman. Most business school heads are disgusting people. Only today are we seeing some reforms in business academics, but usually only at schools with a heavy econ focus. Schools like Wharton will continue to churn out whole classes of monsters.

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Mortentia t1_ixog257 wrote

I still don’t understand Friedman/Hayek worship, considering that Hayek was a relatively poor economist and only a decent liberal philosopher, and Milton Friedman died having admitted that he could not fight Keynes’s ideas anymore and that the Keynesian theory was correct no matter how much he hated to admit it.

The two had a lot of bleed into the business world and somehow only recently has the popularity of econometrics and statistics in market research allowed for proper assessment of business structure. Although, in my BCOM there has been a lot of focus on treating employees appropriately and ensuring that they receive what they deserve to incentivize continued and exceptional performance, so I’d hope that some MBAs are similar.

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capitalism93 t1_ixopdej wrote

Both Friedman and Hayek won the Nobel Prize in Economics for their outstanding contributions to the field. That is probably related to the influence they have had.

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Mortentia t1_ixoq1uy wrote

Oh yeah I’m aware of their influence and the reasons for it but Nobel Prizes don’t necessarily mean that an individual contributed enough or the right things to their field to achieve the type of cult-like following they have.

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heliumeyes t1_ixo2dib wrote

You do realize that the division that they’re doing most of the layoffs in (Devices) is far from profitable?

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Kromgar t1_ixp03f7 wrote

It's called Human Resources for a reason

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akmalhot t1_ixojc3a wrote

They hired hundreds of thousands of people on the last two years. It's not insane to lay off 10,000

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RaycharlesN t1_ixolczx wrote

If they had only hired 10,000 less they wouldn’t have had to fuck these people over

Proper planning prevent piss poor performance

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akmalhot t1_ixon862 wrote

You can't hire the perfect people - because everyone is going to perform at the level needed, perfect screening perfect employees

You're delusional. This is a non story.

They also spent a shit ton of money in trying to grow businesses that weren't profitable. If you take the stance that they shouldnt take the risk of trying to grow new business in the chance they have to close it, millions and millions of less people would have ever been hired in the first place

There are numerous companies who have automatic pio of the bottom 5% performers every year. Why should they be forced to hold onto the lowest performers ? We don't live in some magic utopia

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RaycharlesN t1_ixonq30 wrote

These are not non performing employees, they were told that this wasn’t performance related at all.

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akmalhot t1_ixoo2ff wrote

Yes. Economies shift. The fed raised interest rates

They literally paired back non profitable departments (for example Alexa ) - you can't fund those with debt when it becomes expensive and the marker has turned from favoring growth to profits..

For 12+ years the marker favored growth over all else and there was cheap rates, so you could employ people despite their departments making a loss

This is a stupid argument.

I know you feel bad, and it sucks. But this is a non starter. They over hired , they funded bad investment with cheap debt and they hype of groeth, and the market was okay with those loses. They are not anymore

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RaycharlesN t1_ixoojm6 wrote

They increased executive stock compensation by $1.5B

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akmalhot t1_ixor1rq wrote

Yes they hired 100k people

And let go of 10k of them

The market changed, interest rates went up in the fastest pace ever

What aren't you understanding , amazon is a company, they do what is best for them

Cost of money get very expensive, the market changed, investors don't want to see divisions that are losing billions of dollars per year continue to be funded

This isn't complicated.

Amazon has a fiduciary responsibility to it's investors (lol, but it's true )

It sucks that this happened, but it's a symptom of the entrenched inflation the fed is trying to fight after blasting out helicopter money for 2 years after a decade of zirp .... It's Infidtry wide. Google, fb (fb still makes a metric shit ton of money), etc etc

Maybe these concepts are over your head. Or maybe you should move to France or one of the other countries where it's nearly impossible to fire someone, but it's also extremely difficult to get a decent salary because once your hired you can't fire them easily.

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rifjcn t1_ixohbw9 wrote

The 10,000 is corporate positions.

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tickleMyBigPoop t1_ixo18hd wrote

>they’re laying off 10,000

Because they hired them during Covid lockdowns, we’re no longer locked down so they’re unnecessary given the current capacity.

Why would businesses keep people around they don’t need, that’s incredibly stupid. Jobs aren’t welfare, welfare is welfare.

We should want companies to be as efficient as possible. Why would we want to misallocate labor and capital, after all we’re competing against every other country on earth.

>$12Billion

Much of that is due to the higher margin AWS, and they’re not doing layoffs of engineers.

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LordAlfredo t1_ixo2rm1 wrote

They're laying off engineers in certain divisions, but mostly devices/other orgs (eg Alexa) that are seeing lower revenue this year.

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TheWinks t1_ixoi7mh wrote

Because they're losing literally billions of dollars.

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RaycharlesN t1_ixo1pkb wrote

Amazing revenue this quarter was up 15% - not a post Covid slowdown

a kind employer might say we only need you through Covid when they’re hiring you - you’d plan your life different.

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tickleMyBigPoop t1_ixo205k wrote

>revenue

Revenue doesn’t matter only profit matters in this case net income generated by e-commerce adjusted for inflation compared to previous years. Also if those people aren’t needed why would any company be stupid enough to keep them, it’s like you want American businesses to fail so that way foreign competitors can succeed.

Efficiency makes us all better off in the long term.

> a kind employer might say we only need you through Covid when they’re hiring you

If any company had that kind of crystal ball they’d be better off playing futures markets instead of e-commerce

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heliumeyes t1_ixo2t4v wrote

Your points are very valid but people aren’t going to think logically. They’ll just accuse people like us of being heartless capitalists.

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davon1076 t1_ixoaca1 wrote

Because it is heartless and capitalist.

Throwing 10,000 people out of a job for 'efficiency' while the higher-ups laugh their way to the bank isn't a good fucking look.

It's not a fair point to say "oh but foreign corps tho!" because guess what, they're heartless and capitalist too.

Valid points my ass. You sit here excusing labor purges like it's fucking nothing while you aren't on the receiving end of one.

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heliumeyes t1_ixoj2y0 wrote

Oh I have been on the end of lay offs. Twice actually. So I know pretty well how it feels. And it sucks.

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RaycharlesN t1_ixo2ll5 wrote

They did manage to award an extra 1.4B in stock based compensation to executives this quarter so we should feel good about that

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tickleMyBigPoop t1_ixoub4g wrote

Stock compensation is paid for via share dilution usually, aka the shareholders pay it.

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RaycharlesN t1_ixp3ql4 wrote

Shareholders pay for everything, they own the company

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kuburga t1_ixo6tsz wrote

You just came here and decided to make an argument for misallocating capital into billionaires' super-yachts over investing in creating any form of humane job for 10,000 people which is something Amazon can afford doing probably 500,000 times over. This mindset is as nearsighted and apathetic as the average politician's.

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Kerostasis t1_ixoi80j wrote

>job for 10,000 people… 500,000 times over.

I know this was hyperbole, but for reference that works out to hiring every working age person on the planet. No, they can’t actually afford this.

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tickleMyBigPoop t1_ixotw5z wrote

> misallocating capital into billionaires' super-yachts

Billionaires aka CEOs of these companies aren’t (mostly their cash compensation is usually super low) paid via the revenue streams of a company, they’re paid by the shareholders via share dilution.

What that means is the owner equity is decreasing in value (marginally, it’s priced in ages ahead of time) to pay the executives, they’re not being paid via cash flows.

Try some financial literacy courses

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kuburga t1_ixpm4zw wrote

I'd rather stay ignorant on economics (which I won't) than running to a sweaty rescue of one of the biggest and immoral companies on the planet all the while explicitly asking and telling other people to think about the company's well-being rather than the workers'. Despicable. I think you get what I mean, and what I mean is: They can do a shit ton with their power and they choose this.

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tickleMyBigPoop t1_ixqsvil wrote

> explicitly asking and telling other people to think about the company's well-being rather than the workers

It’s not the job of companies to give two shits about anyone or anything besides maximizing efficiency and shareholder value. Companies aren’t your mom and dad, they’re not a charity, they’re not the welfare state, those three things are what you want to take care of people. Companies exist to provide services and products, the more efficient they are the greater the national wealth and the higher the tax base

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Eisernes t1_ixon2gc wrote

They took a 8 billion dollar loss on Alexa this year, which is where the majority of these layoffs are happening. This is a business, not a charity. Perhaps one day UNICEF will get into the unprofitable devices business, but until then they will have to go through Amazon.

On a more serious note, Amazon is an incredibly bloated business. I know because I work there. I know people who work there remotely who don't even turn on their laptops every day. It is a very decentralized business model. Teams work independently and it is very easy to slip through the cracks. A lot of those 10,000 layoffs are HR personnel too. They are super bloated. Every building I have been to, HR is the largest support department. Bigger than IT, safety, and RME. Much of the job HR used to do a few years ago is now done by chat bots and outsourcing. I legit don't know WTF they do all day. There will probably be way more than 10,000 laid off by the time it's done. They don't pay stock dividends and there are only so many stock buybacks that they can do. Shareholders will not accept this level of loss from a company that should be printing money.

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RaycharlesN t1_ixoo9wm wrote

Corporate, devices and “other” divisions - not just devices. HR has to hire people, they have to train people, they have to ensure no labor laws (or other laws) are broken. HR is how you don’t get sued because your managers play grab ass. They hire hundreds of thousands of seasonal workers, how you going to do that without HR? Kind of shocked to see someone say they don’t know what they do, that’s sort of ridiculous.

They managed to award 1.5B more than last quarter in stock compensation to executives. So please spare me the shareholder thing.. they are gorging themselves

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Eisernes t1_ixop6p8 wrote

Yeah most of HR at Amazon has nothing to do with any of that. They mostly answer stupid questions that revolve around time balances and process terminations. They don't train people, the learning department does that. Labor laws are enforced by legal and compliance. Lawsuits? Also legal. None of those seasonals are hired by Amazon. A temp agency does all of it. We just give them a quota. They don't even answer the stupid questions and process the terminations anymore. It is done by bots.

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RaycharlesN t1_ixophhc wrote

Yeah they should get fired, fuck em, they don’t do nothing. What they need to do is give even more stock compensation to executives because that’s a sure fire way to return shareholder value.

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tickleMyBigPoop t1_ixoupdt wrote

Stock compensation is paid via share dilution aka the shareholders pay it.

But jobs aren’t a charity if a company doesn’t need someone they should be let go.

Why don’t you answer this; why do you want American firms to be inefficient? Why do you want US companies to be outcompetes by foreign firms?

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RaycharlesN t1_ixp4hha wrote

Found Jeff Bezos

The shareholders pay for everything, they own it, it doesn’t matter if it’s stock or cash it’s shareholders paying it.

I would submit to you that it’s inefficient to have hired them to begin with, than morally bankrupt to toss them aside when the company is so profitable that they don’t have to. Find other work for them. When you employ 1.5M people and the majority of them still need food stamps you’re doing something wrong. The median worker makes $29k and you’re tossing around $15B in stock comp to your executives - Fuck this place.

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Eisernes t1_ixopv39 wrote

Also to me and the other hundreds of thousand employees who are partially paid in stock. 12.5b in profit is pretty cool, but 20b would be cooler. It's not like the Monopoly man is sitting in some Seattle c suite cashing all the checks just because 1% of the company got laid off.

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uuhson t1_ixp2w12 wrote

Upvote for Joe Dirt UNICEF reference

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LuangPrabangisinLaos t1_ixoi1zl wrote

Where I am at average salary is 18.75 an hour for amazon warehouse. Assuming 40 hours a week, the positon would cost 39000 per 52 weeks. Times 10,000 that's 390 million.

That's 3.25% of a 12billion. Not a negligible amount.

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RaycharlesN t1_ixoijhg wrote

If you freeze hiring and move employees around you don’t have to lay anyone off. Amazon has given these people that are laid off the opportunity to apply for other open jobs within the company but when they do apply they’re not being interviewed or seriously considered without explanation. There is no attempt to care for these employees at all. No loyalty - Just greed and profit.

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cchiu23 t1_ixp3k86 wrote

Lol, people working in the alexa division definitely isn't going to be working in the warehouse, I can guarentee you that

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Stupidquestionduh t1_ixoliiu wrote

You act like Amazon doesn't shit out even more money in other wasteful areas.

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moosehornman t1_ixr1oee wrote

The definition of capitalism. Only the very rich get to come to the party.

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