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by tyingq
3051 days ago
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A layoff of any kind or scale is interesting for AMZN, given that they have so much diversity of teams, jobs, skills, products, etc. It's interesting that they couldn't repurpose a few hundred people, even given their infamous up or out mentality. Sounds like they are knowingly giving up good people since the current culture fires anyone that doesn't produce already. Willingly giving up good people doesn't seem like a healthy signal. Edit: Encountered this at a company acquired by private equity right before the 2008 bubble. They did 3 straight stack-rank/fire-the-bottom rounds. Was clear in the second round we were letting go of really good talent to the competition solely for some executive's bonus tied to short term numbers. And, it did bite them later. |
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Let's say hypothetically that Amazon started a VR project and hired a team of 100 PhDs whose expertise is VR to work on that project. After 2 years, the company realized that it's not working out and shut that project down.
Because of the bad optics of layoffs (especially of such highly skilled engineers), the engineers were reassigned to various positions that require expertise in computer graphics. Bear in mind that these 100 engineers have niche skills and most of them feel that VR is their life's calling; they're not interested in generic computer graphics. They are overpaid, underemployed, and miserable.
The best of them leave after a month of two; the remainder trudges on for a year until they also leave or get pushed out. The outcome is that Amazon has wasted shareholder money and got themselves a bad rep with those engineers (and their friends). A straight layoff would have worked much better, but unfortunately most companies don't have the balls for it.