yeah, the only problem is that this results in the best talent leaving, you’re stuck with people who have nowhere else to go. it’s one of those short-term profits kinda things, which is why Wall St loves it so much.
Comment on Amazon tech workers leaving for other jobs in response to return to office mandate
omarfw@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Now they can replace them without paying unemployment and pay the new workers a lower wage. This is what they wanted to happen. Mega corporations are a problem we need to solve as a society.
eee@lemm.ee 2 days ago
mrspaz@lemmy.world 2 days ago
They have a name for it: Dead Sea Effect.
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 1 day ago
Ooh, that’s good.
TheFunkyMonk@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I thought the same. Interesting strategy cutting the people who are good enough to get another job.
SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 2 days ago
As long as it looks good on paper, somebody in higher management is getting a bonus for this.
GBU_28@lemm.ee 2 days ago
And they want people off the vesting ramp as early as possible.
Amazon does 5-15-40-40
jaybone@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I’ve… never heard of such a vesting schedule. Doesn’t everyone else pretty much do 25%/year ?
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
It’s precisely because their working standards are absolutely absurd and unsustainable, so a LOT of people bail before full vesting. AMZN HR intentionally structures the vesting schedule like this because they have numbers to prove it works out in the company’s favor.
1984@lemmy.today 2 days ago
Amazon is super stressful and I guess a lot of quit the first few years. Maybe the 40% is to motivate them to stay for more hellish years.
I’m very happy not to work at Amazon.
jaybone@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Oh I get whythey do it. I’m just surprised they can get away with it. Also they pay pretty damn well so I guess that helps.
blady_blah@lemmy.world 1 day ago
This isn’t what they want to happen. They know it will happen, but this isn’t the goal or objective.
Amazon is a big boy company, if they want to cut staff, they’ll cut staff. The problem with cutting staff this way, is that they don’t get to decide who they’re cutting. They don’t want to cut talented employees at random, they want to pick the low performers and let them go. This is kind of the opposite of that.
The higher skilled the employee is, the more likely they are to have been hired remote, and to feel they can find another job also. That means they’re effectively shooting themselves in the foot and getting rid of some of their talented employees for the benefit of bringing people into the office.
There has been a swing in the business opinion that work from home isn’t as efficient. This is basically the higher-ups falling in line with that opinion.
BallsandBayonets@lemmings.world 1 day ago
I think they do actually want to cut the high skilled talent. High skill means high pay, and now that they’ve achieved market dominance in pretty much every industry they’ve stuck their penis into they don’t need talent. Lower skilled, and therefore lower paid, employees can do just food enough to keep everything from burning down just long enough for the C-suite to get their bonuses and cash out. After that, who cares, they’re on to their next grift.
0x0@programming.dev 1 day ago
There has been a swing in the business opinion
Depends on where you read that info, it tends to be 50/50 pro/against really.
orclev@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yeah it’s 50/50 because the executives really don’t like it, but the actual data supports remote work being far more efficient. They’re working really hard to cook the books to make it look like the opposite to appease the execs but they can only do so much. Give them a few more years to cherry-pick data and bury inconvenient results and they’ll be back to the same bullshit that justified productivity destroying (but cheap) choices like hot desking and open plan offices.
Brewchin@lemmy.world 1 day ago
To add to what others have replied, Amazon have an institutional belief that everyone who makes it through the Loop is better than 50% of existing staff.
It could be post-hoc rationalising of back-loaded share vesting, hire-to-fire, and their other many practices, but that’s the position. With that kind of thinking, it makes this behaviour, including it’s consequences, a no-brainer win:win to them.
orclev@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Quality programmers are a finite resource. Amazon chewed through the entire unskilled labor market with their warehouses and then struggled to find employees to meet their labor needs. If they try the same stunt with skilled labor they’re in for a very rude awakening. They’ll be able to find people, but only for well above market rates. They’re highly likely to find in the long run it would have been much cheaper to hang onto the people they already had.
omarfw@lemmy.world 2 days ago
The whole problem with companies like Amazon is that hardly anyone in charge of them seems to care about long term sustainability. They all just invest enough effort to squeeze out some short term profits, earn their bonuses and then leave for another company to do it all again. Nobody is interested in sustainability because there is no incentive to. They’re playing hot potato with the collapse of the company.
WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Now expand that to the entire planetary economy. Unsustainable short term gains is the entire industrial revolution.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
We kicked “this quarter” thinking into high gear when Nixon permanently increased inflation.
Wanderer@lemm.ee 1 day ago
There has been efficiency gains throughout. Capitalism is amazing for that, far better than other systems.
The problem is too many people. If standard of living is to increase then the resource requirement is due to massive unsustainable population growth.
That and the fact the public hate externalities and don’t want them used at all never mind aggressively.
circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org 1 day ago
Amazon is not at all alone in this. Much of 2024 capitalism, at least within the tech space, works like this pretty much everywhere.
omarfw@lemmy.world 1 day ago
100%
greenskye@lemm.ee 1 day ago
That’s the next executive’s problem. These executives will jump ship with their golden parachutes before any of that affects them.
Jrockwar@feddit.uk 1 day ago
Well then bring it on. If feels too big to fail, but if (hypothetically) Amazon were to go under, the world would be a better place.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Bold of you to think that’s what they want.
Kalysta@lemm.ee 1 day ago
They may not want them, but with how many people are switching to things like AWS, they may find they need them.
And it will ultimately cost them more to find new people when they realize that they’re pissing off their customers with their poor new hires.
I will be happy to watch them squirm when they come to this realization. Karma is a bitch, Amazon.
Sinuhe@lemmy.world 2 days ago
An awakening would mean they would analyze and understand the situation. They won’t. Amazon has and probably always had a bullish “my way or the highway” attitude - ask people what they think, pretend you care, then ignore everything they might say. Upper managers make decisions uniquely based off costs and short term vision, and are never held accountable for their consequences. I worked there for years and you really can’t imagine how bad the work culture is there, whatever you have in mine is worse in reality
jj4211@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Problem is for a company like Amazon, even if the brain drain will result in obviously inferior customer experience, it could take years before that happens and for it to be recognized and for the business results suffer for it. In the meantime, bigger margins and restricted stock matures and they can get their money now.
Particularly with business clients, like AWS customers, it will take a huge amount of obvious screwups before those clients are willing to undertake the active effort of leaving.
0x0@programming.dev 1 day ago
That’s a foreign concept for management, they only see one quarter at a time.
jj4211@lemmy.world 1 day ago
No, they see further than that. Sometimes their restricted stock takes a whole year to be released!