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Amazon Is Cutting Hundreds of Corporate Jobs (techcrunch.com)
According to a Seattle Times report, Amazon is laying off hundreds of corporate workers in its Seattle headquarters and elsewhere. "The corporate cuts come after an eight-year hiring spree, taking the company from 5,000 in 2010 to 40,000 in its Seattle headquarters and gobbling up several retail businesses throughout the country," reports TechCrunch. From the report: However, according to the report, Amazon's rising employee numbers over the last two years left some departments over budget and with too many staff on hand. In the last few months, the company implemented hiring freezes to stem the flow of new workers, cutting the number of open positions in half from the 3,500 listed last Summer. The layoffs will mainly focus on Amazon's Seattle office, but there have already been cuts in some of its retail subsidiaries in other parts of the country, such as the Las Vegas-based online footwear retailer Zappos, which had to lay off 30 people recently. And the company behind Diapers.com, Quidsi, had to cut more than 250 jobs a year ago. The moves suggest Amazon may be trying to rein in spending and consolidate some of its retail businesses.
Studies seem to show that it is very hard to accurately assess employees during the interview process. The only effective way of keeping quality up is to fire under-performers. If Amazon hasn't been doing this regularly enough for eight years, then I could see why this could be long overdue. To some extent you can find useful work for under-performers to do, but as some point you just get too many of them.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
not sure what is confusing for you here. You can be cutting unnecessary staff while still growing or having growth plans. You don't keep unnecessary positions just because you are growing.
well as someone who worked there they litterly hire anyone with a degree. there turnovers are way to insane for them to be picky. the issue is with the hire ups they have way to many that are the same job renamed 12 different times.
well as someone who worked there they litterly hire anyone with a degree.
Just curious - what was your degree in? Please tell me it was literature.
If you have ~40,000 employees, laying off hundreds seems like the normal hiring process. People come and go. Also, if you want to get rid of business groups who under perform or are not the focus of the business anymore, you remove those jobs. Then hire in other areas. Common practice in large organizations. Not sure how this really is a story. I'm not even touching on the seasonal aspect of their business.
On the other hand, if they were laying off say 10% of peeps in Seattle, then you have a story.
Government is a completely different rotting barrel of fish. With government they just hire more staff to do the work that the incompetents can't do while keeping them employed as unions can't possibly accept a public servant as being sacked for being useless.
Well hopefully they are reducing their H1B visa workers first.