[speff]

I'm not sure I understand this viewpoint. Just because a company made a big profit doesn't mean it has to keep positions it decides is unneeded. This isn't the first time I've seen this type of attitude and I'm genuinely curious about the alternative. Once you make above $X in profit, you're obligated to keep employees who aren't necessarily doing the work you want done?

[whatever1]

Hi, people are not widgets.

They take huge personal, family and financial risks to move for a job. When you are getting rid en-masse people, you are ruining local communities. There is a real societal cost.

It also sucks for businesses, because hiring & onboarding is so freaking hard and expensive. Not to mention that once the company has established a reputation of a revolving door, then nobody gives a shit about it. They will exploit it for the short term and let it die.

Layoffs should the absolute last resort for a company due to the disruption they cause. If the market dynamics do not naturally lead to this, then regulation should shape the field.

[speff]

I absolutely agree with your assessment that it should be the last resort option due to the societal cost of a large number of people losing their job. On top of the risks you mention, there's also the mental hit that often accompanies layoffs not just for the folks who were fired, but the increased feeling of paranoia from the people who are left.

But can it not be the case the this /was/ the company's last resort? There's another option of moving people around and retraining them to do another function. What if that was considered and then rejected because there weren't enough departments growing to warrant that? Rhetorically, if they don't have the ability/opportunity to re-assign people, then what?

[jwilber]

I understand your argument but it just seems like you’re purposely being contrarian.

Here’s why what you wrote seems needlessly contrarian: Amazon just posted an $18B quarter, so there is no pressing financial pressure. Okay, so you suggest this may be a last resort in lieu of retraining, but we’re talking about 14k jobs across many teams (I know of at least 40 affected), levels, and job families. The idea of needing to cross train is obviously not the culprit at that scale; An SDE laid off from one team can easily perform the same tasks on many others internally. This also completely ignores how Amazon works internally, with managers required to rank employees for pip, and, for events just like this one, URA, regardless of whether or not they deem them to be competent or not.

Of course, Amazon has also been documented to use automated processes for pip/layoffs, and the idea that layoffs involved any ounce of consideration as a last resort is so unbelievable it feels almost inflammatory.

The notion that criticizing one of history’s most profitable companies laying off thousands (at the height of their profits) is the same thing as stating, “every company beyond profit X should never do layoffs” is a blatant misrepresentation and ignores any context.

[speff]

If you know people affected, then you have more information than me and I'm not going to pretend like I have a better grasp on the situation than you.

However, the "last resort" comment I made was a guess to their reasoning - it wasn't an authoritative explanation. My core point is that Amazon seems to think they can do the same, or about the same, or an acceptable amount less with fewer people. If that's the case, then from their perspective, they're overpaying on labor. That's it.

[some_guy_nobel]

From the outside looking in, if your "last resort" comment truly was a guess to their reasoning, then I'm rather shocked. We're both on HN, so I have to assume we both work in tech and have access to the same information regarding why Amazon has earned its awful reputation.

Beyond that, I agree with your larger point, with an asterisk on "overpaying", as I do think an American company should have an incentive to prevent laying off workers just to refill them with offshoring and hiring H1Bs, especially at Amazon's scale of profitability.

[shepardrtc]

I think you're missing a more human point: people dislike the effect of hiring and firing thousands of people with zero consideration. They hire thousands because it makes management look like they're ramping up to solve problems, and then they fire this many people because it makes management look like they're cutting costs to be more efficient. It's all about management keeping up the illusion that they're "on top of things", when in reality they're just playing number games.

There's empathy involved in the revulsion toward this kind of process. Please take time to consider that not everyone fired is a $300k/year rockstar programmer who can just as easily walk over to Meta or Google for a job. I know of people who have uprooted their lives and work under the idea that if they do a good job they'll stay on, when in fact the reality is more like gambling and they could be fired at any point.

[m_rpn]

I'll explain you how it works: upper management needs urgent spend cuts in the next 3-6-12 months to get bonus -> upper management lays off N thousands people in order to reach goal and get bonus.

[rendaw]

At 14000, it's likely there wasn't much consideration on an individual basis.

[AIorNot]

Because 25+ years of experience in American Capitalism as its evolved and practiced today has taught me that C-Suite and upper management makes FOMO driven decisions on fear, politics and corporate quarterly returns, ie humans forced into a hunger games like culture of lowest common decency and hype driven cycles of management speak - 5 years ago it was Crypto and offshoring and now its AI more offshoring -paying only lip service to employee obligations with no attention to anything beyond that (forget pensions or decent healthcare of the 20 Century)

Ultimately even the most talented people are numbers on spreadsheet strewn aside at the end of the day as MBA capitalist hackers try to optimize every aspect of a short term numbers game to get ahead in stack ranking..

I’ve watched as incredibly talented and driven people are thrown by the wayside and ageism and lack of human decency or respect is has become the norm

Watching hardworking people and the middle class suffer because Billionaires, insane growth expectations, MBAs and Private Equity had burned this country to the ground…

And yes, don’t forget that those type As who worked on NASA missions - “Mission focused” as the article naively trumpets to get attention - once they get cancer, get a little past 50, have kids with needs ie suffer some through life - like all of us eventually do..they get on the chopping block - and are quickly forgotten trust me, I worked in Mission Control too once

Now, Amazon has never been an ethical company—and I’m sure its employees know that to one extent or another but they have indeed been a relentless one and that relentlessness and metric driven culture has driven the humanity out of the tech world (whatever little it had as Autistic or Nerdy edgelord billionaires fund ever more corrupt politics and misery for the masses) as our society is rewarded with even more shorter term thinking and an attention economy with the attention span of a Goldfish.. all these tech companies deserve worse than the skewering they got in HBOs Silicon Valley

Ok end of Rant.. hope some younger folks take heed and try to change up this shitty system

[Esophagus4]

> If the market dynamics do not naturally lead to this, then regulation should shape the field.

Look no further than the economies of France and Germany… both of those countries have very stringent regulations around layoffs. And none of whom have the dominance of American companies or breadth of unicorn startups.

Making firing difficult makes hiring difficult, which disincentives risk and innovation.

The leave/fire at-will contracts of most tech jobs in the US is a feature, not a bug.

> It also sucks for businesses, because hiring & onboarding is so freaking hard and expensive.

Sometimes, but sometimes not. Layoffs are important to get rid of low performers who could be replaced with better talent, and they’re important to help companies adjust their labor to market conditions.

[whatever1]

Neither France nor Germany have access to the high-risk capital that American startups enjoy.

Layoff protections and entrepreneurship in this case have a correlation but not a causation relationship.

If your thesis was correct startups would thrive in States with absolutely zero protections, yet the most successful tech startups are in the most “stringent” (for American standards) State. California.

[Esophagus4]

Even if it is the most stringent, California is still an at-will state. You can fire people for any reason at any time, minus protections for discrimination or retaliation, etc.

France and Germany require a lot more bureaucratic red tape (documentation, severance pay, notice periods, and justification). I have not seen this personally in France, but I have in Germany and it was a nightmare. I will be very careful about hiring in Germany next time.

An incredible amount of capital is in the United States for a reason (you're on a website of those capital providers). While termination protocol is obviously not the only reason, it is undeniably one of the many that contribute to the States having the most favorable environment to build a high growth, innovative company.

[disgruntledphd2]

I look forward to Americans realizing that it was the dollar all along at some point in the next fifty years.

[Esophagus4]

Well in fifty years, I likely won’t be here judging by life expectancy numbers… so I guess it’s a moot point for me.

Kidding aside, it’s a whole bunch of pieces. Including the dollar, including the friendly regulatory environment, including friendly tax treatment for founders (which European nations are starting to adopt), including small areas with lots of great schools, plus those schools helping to connect founders with capital, plus gobs of money running around looking for high risk opportunities, plus…

It’s not just the ability to fire someone, and it’s not just the dollar.

[iseletsk]

California prohibits non-competes, which is one of the reasons why so many new start-ups are created here. So, while it is not the most 'business' state, it is actually very startup-friendly.

[disgruntledphd2]

Yeah, and Sweden's success in startups also argues against the notion that it's hire and fire fast.

And if you're a loss making business like most startups, it's easier to lay people off even in Europe.

[brazukadev]

Well, look no further than the American economy if you want to see what unlimited layoffs and outsourcing can do.

[Esophagus4]

You mean... the economy with the highest developer salaries on the planet?[1]

Or the one that has the world's largest startup economy? Or the one that has almost all of the world's top 20 companies by market cap?

[1]https://codesubmit.io/blog/software-engineer-salary-by-count...

[Supermancho]

> Or the one that has the world's largest startup economy?

The reason there is excess capital is because of opportunistic and predatory behavior. Optimal capitalism, which other countries can't compete with (fully). This doesn't make it a net good for the American public, nor an optimal strategy for other economies.

[Esophagus4]

If you see the startup economy that has minted an absurd amount of wealth for some very talented people as predatory and a net negative for the public, we see things very differently.

And so do most who come to the Valley to be a part of it.

This strikes me as such an abjectly absurd thing to say that I can’t imagine we’ll come to a common conclusion on this.

And by the way, you’re writing this comment on a forum operated by one of the largest “predatory” sources of capital in the Valley.

[arwhatever]

Is the friction of hiring and firing responsible for all of Europe’s economic stagnation? Only some of it? If only some, how are you quantifying the proportion?

[shepardrtc]

I pulled myself from a recent Amazon interview process because of how bad they are. At first I had the opinion that this could be interesting and exciting, but the more I thought about how they treated people, the more I realized that the internal culture must be terrible. And honestly I just don't need to be involved with any of that.

[bdangubic]

14k is massive layoff, even for a company as large as amazon. it isn’t about the “employees who aren’t necessarily doing the work you want done” for sure (all the while they are off-shoring by the more thousands while “america first”-run government is bailing out argentine :)

[speff]

That's 4% of corporate employees going by Reuter's 350k corp employee count[0]. Sounds well within the trimming-the-fat numbers. The rest of your comment alludes to an obligation towards improving the domestic economy. That can be done through regulation, but then there's a balancing act between under/over regulation. Too much and you end up in an EU situation that hinders small tech business growth.

So we come back to my previous statement/question. Above what profit amount should a company be obligated to keep (in their eyes) unproductive workers?

[0]: https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/amazon-target...

[bdangubic]

they are not “unproductive” :)

to answer your question - company should have a right to fire 99% of the people if they want at any point in time and there should be no regulation of any kind against that ever.

what america should do is add $250k per year per employee tax for any employee hired outside of the US.

[speff]

No arguments from me there

[malfist]

Except amazon trims the fat every year

[pvelagal]

A company's fiduciary duty is towards shareholders, which forces a mindset where Employees fiduciary duty should be towards themselves.

People will Unionize or create laws where companies's fiduciary duty should be towards both employees and shareholders.

Well, this is all until Elon's Robots will change everything :)

[taurath]

People won't unionize because they don't actually have very much power nowadays compared to corps. People who unionized in the 40s, 50s and 60s could afford a home on an hourly wage. In the labor market its pretty much serfdom, unless you come from money. Look at rents vs incomes for goodness sake

[catlifeonmars]

They’re people, not disposable objects. The alternative would be to distribute the cost of the layoffs evenly across the employer and the employees. Right now employees pay a disproportionate portion of the cost.

[speff]

The cost you're referring to is fairly abstract - I'm not sure how it can be implemented for the employer. The cost to the laid-off employee is a loss of income, mental trauma, potential loss of residence. What would your ideal solution for the employer be here?

Loss of money? Layoffs normally have severance packages that are paid out to the employee - this can be seen as the company taking a monetary hit - though not proportional like you said. But what's the alternative here? 5x/10x'ing the severance package? I feel like that would make the job market even rougher as companies would be even more conservative with who and how much they hire.

Mental trauma? I mentioned it in another comment, but the employees after a layoff normally do have an increased fear of future layoffs which impact morale which would result in lower productivity.

Loss of residence / food? I'm coming up blank here.

[catlifeonmars]

Yeah I’m not sure there’s an obvious/ideal answer.

I do think there’s value in disincentivizing churn though. What we’ve been seeing lately is rapid hiring followed by rapid firing. I bet there’s some inflection point where the job market would actually benefit from less churn even if it comes at the cost of higher unemployment in the short term.

[taurath]

> What would your ideal solution for the employer be here?

Have business make responsibility more than ruthless sociopathy to grow, like any other era of business

[jackdoe]

or you wait for the inspector's call.