[lev99]

Seattle Times likes to give Amazon bad press. Seattle has enough other tech companies to absorb a few hundred jobs. Companies routinely end up over-hiring or having redundant positions. It appears that they are laying off less than 10% of their Seattle staff, while they are still expanding the amount of office space they occupy in Seattle.

This seems like no big deal for Seattle and Amazon.

[myroon5]

"less than 10% of their Seattle staff"

even less than 1%

[lev99]

The problem is "a few hundred" is an undefined number.

400 would be about 1%, which would be fairly reported as a few hundred. My ceiling number is very high, but I would believe more than 1% are let go.

[tyingq]

Having to enact a layoff to deal with 400 people when you already have a reputation about being ruthless with "up or out" is interesting though. As I understand it, it's not hard to fire deadwood at Amazon. So why risk the PR hit with "layoffs"? Seems curious.

[pzh]

Maybe it's not bad PR with Wall St given how the stock went up after the announcement.

[tyingq]

That seems consistent with solely short term interest.

[seanmcdirmid]

Does amazon really employ 40,000 people in its corporate headquarters? Microsoft does, but it has a much much bigger campus.

[mrep]

Yes according to [0]. Just look at their campus map [1]. It is massive and some of those buildings are dozens of stories tall.

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/p/feature/4kc8ovgnyf996yn

[1]: https://static.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/7...

[foota]

It doesn't really, maybe by footprint on the ground, but Amazon has lots of tall buildings.

[wickawic]

Yes they do, and the math works out. About 8k people work in their two belltown towers alone.