Amazon slashing 9,000 more jobs in fresh round of layoffs
Amazon is preparing another round of layoffs, with 9,000 more roles to be cut from its human resources, advertising, Twitch, and Amazon Web Services teams.
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The tech giant jobs bloodbath continues, with Amazon the latest to initiate a second round of layoffs. In a note from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy released on Monday, another wave will hit the retail giant's workforce in the coming weeks.
Jassy warns that Amazon intends "to eliminate about 9,000 more positions in the next few weeks," in what is described as a "difficult decision, but one that we think is best for the company long term."
The job cull will focus on a few areas, specifically in the streaming service Twitch, Amazon Web Services, Advertising, and PXT, the People Experience and Technology Solutions team.
In justifying the layoffs, Jassy cites the "uncertain economy" and an "overriding tenet of our annual planning" to be leaner. After the initial January layoffs of 18,000 positions, the company completed a second phase of planning, leading to further role reductions.
In the announcement, Jassy said that the 9,000 roles were announced now rather than in January because not all teams in the company completed their analyses in the fall.
"Rather than rush through these assessments without the appropriate diligence, we chose to share these decisions as we've made them so people had the information as soon as possible," Jassy added.
Amazon's announcement follows days after another from Facebook, which plans to lay off another 10,000 jobs as part of its "year of efficiency."
While most tech giants have had to deal with reducing their headcount via layoffs, Apple has managed to avoid that fate so far. This is in part due to Apple being more cautious in hiring workers during the pandemic, as well as being more selective in recruitment and minimizing the backfilling of vacated roles.
Read on AppleInsider
Amazon logo
The tech giant jobs bloodbath continues, with Amazon the latest to initiate a second round of layoffs. In a note from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy released on Monday, another wave will hit the retail giant's workforce in the coming weeks.
Jassy warns that Amazon intends "to eliminate about 9,000 more positions in the next few weeks," in what is described as a "difficult decision, but one that we think is best for the company long term."
The job cull will focus on a few areas, specifically in the streaming service Twitch, Amazon Web Services, Advertising, and PXT, the People Experience and Technology Solutions team.
In justifying the layoffs, Jassy cites the "uncertain economy" and an "overriding tenet of our annual planning" to be leaner. After the initial January layoffs of 18,000 positions, the company completed a second phase of planning, leading to further role reductions.
In the announcement, Jassy said that the 9,000 roles were announced now rather than in January because not all teams in the company completed their analyses in the fall.
"Rather than rush through these assessments without the appropriate diligence, we chose to share these decisions as we've made them so people had the information as soon as possible," Jassy added.
Amazon's announcement follows days after another from Facebook, which plans to lay off another 10,000 jobs as part of its "year of efficiency."
While most tech giants have had to deal with reducing their headcount via layoffs, Apple has managed to avoid that fate so far. This is in part due to Apple being more cautious in hiring workers during the pandemic, as well as being more selective in recruitment and minimizing the backfilling of vacated roles.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
The world will continue to need electricians, plumbers, brick masons, welders, carpenters, big equipment operators for the foreseeable future, not so much programmers, data entry workers, marketing types, even certain engineering fields as AI will see to that. It’ll be awhile until Boston Dynamics comes up with a robot that can wire and plumb a new home.
End rant from a 73 year old curmudgeon.
Twitch had to look that up. No big loss.
Advertising...we could all use less of that.
PXT...even after watching the video...not sure what they do/did...definitely not a profit center though https://www.amazon.jobs/en/teams/PXT-Solutions
Funny thing, up till a year ago I worked for a company that made robots. The systems were for inspections, and repairs of things that used to require a trained technician/hazardous materials person to do. Currently the other two fields that I work with, writing and art, are in a panic because AI generated material is moving in. Sure the stuff is odd and you can tell, now, but it’s getting better, and a lot of companies will say that it’s cheaper and “good enough”. CGI has decimated the model building business for everything from architecture, to use in sales and courts. Computer systems/AI is creeping in, and in a decade there will be no market for voiceover work. First it will be in audio-books, but soon it will go from the script for cartoons, and anime. Closed Captioning workers have almost completely been replaced with AI transcriptions. Yeah they get a fair amount wrong, but they are “cheap and good enough”. There’s a lot of fields that AI and robots are moving into and putting people out of work. At the robotics company they could have employed a dozes trained machinists. When I left they had three, who mostly tweaked the CNC lathes and mills, and then sat around watching the machine do all the work. Sure the quality was second to none, but I kept thinking about all the machinists that were not finding jobs, and if they did it was for half or a quarter of what they would have gotten twenty years ago.
This isn’t just a Millennial thing. It’s hitting everyone, and it’s going to hit more.
As for AI replacing software engineers — that’s not likely IMO. Typing code is only one part of my job as a software engineer. The hard part is the thinking about how to design our systems for our domains and scenarios. No chatbot is going to help there. Just as CAD didn’t replace architects.
As @StrangeDays has said, engineers don’t have anything to worry about (at least the good ones). ChatGPT can only generate things based on prior art, not write its own code from scratch. While ML has vastly improved, it’s still in the category of 4GL languages for programming in my opinion: I don’t trust them to always do the right thing. It’s a great tool, good for finding insights or solutions, but a tool doesn’t replace the programmer. That is not to say it’s useless. It could allow us engineers to be more productive by allowing us to focus on other, more important things, or provide us with insights we may not have found in a timely manner. As software engineers, we kinda strive to automate things so that human errors don’t happen, make things quicker, or have the computer do something we find mundane to free us up to do more interesting tasks. ML is no different and really the next step.
I do understand what @lkrupp is saying in terms of seeing these big tech layoffs being a wake-up call for many of the current generation of workers. The lack of humanity in the way some workers are being let go, for example Google and Twitter firing workers by Email or text, or simply deleting their only data connection connection to their now-former employer, makes me wonder whether robots are doing the dirty work for gutless bosses and HR people. Being laid-off is undoubtedly traumatic for those affected and needs to be done in a humane manner. It's like WTF, some of these people have given the company their heart and soul for many years and they're being laid-off like they are excess furniture being sold off to a reseller.
Every company I've ever worked for had to lay off some people at some point for various reasons. Sometimes the numbers were very large. They never discarded them like trash. The larger companies, which Google, Amazon, and Meta qualify to be today, would lay people off mid-week, like a Terrible Tuesday or Wicked Wednesday, so they wouldn't immediately go home and stew over their situation without anyone there to listen. Their boss and HR would talk to the people, usually one-on-one and face-to-face. They would then be directed to report to an off-site "transition center" the company setup ahead of time. This meant that the first place laid-off workers visited after getting let go was a place where they would start working on how to transition to the next steps to get back into the work force. They learned about their severance package and worked with counsellors to help with building resumes, honing interviewing skills, and accessing resources like outside recruiters. Of course none of this removed the sting of being let go, but it was forward focused and gave affected workers access to things that could help them out for several weeks of the transition process.
As far as "job security" is concerned, I've always subscribed to the tenet that your only real job security is your ability get a new job. This requires personal dedication and sacrifice to keeping your skills and understanding of the current job market, industry trends, and marketable skills up to date. This is especially true in technology focused fields like system engineering, software development, software architecture, and modern programming languages, widely used frameworks, and modern software development techniques. You should always be surveying job listings and understand what employers are looking for today, which are probably not the same one's that you acquired five years ago or graduated with. Don't expect that your boss or your employer is going to make an effort to keep you marketable or help grow your career. You may be in a job that helps you stay on the leading edge and develop your skills. But this is fairly rare, so don't expect that your current employer is going to much of anything to help you grow your career beyond what you are doing for them today, which may actually be 10 years behind current market needs.
Stay curious and always be learning.
In contrast, Apples largest merger in the last 25 years was only $3 billion dollars, Apples best acquisition cost $400 million but it came with the best CEO in the last 25 years, and three other acquisitions, PA Semi, Intrinsity, and Anobit critical to Apple’s, Arm SOC’s development, cost Apple a total of 1.1 billion dollars. ‘I’d call that a bargain” (The Who).
Current jobs will be lost on a huge scale.
The question is then, can we create new jobs or just get ready for a life without paid work for the majority?
The EU has had plenty of informal sessions on the idea of 'universal incomes' (income without having to work for the economic reward).
AI is perfect for repetitive tasks, analytical tasks, sensing tasks, dangerous tasks...
It's everywhere already.
It will only advance and permeate society to much higher levels. Both for the good and the bad.
We will adapt, as we always have done, and again, for the better or the worse.
I remember moving to Spain and being shocked to learn I had to visit three different employees in the same office just to take some cash out of my account.
A few years later the same task required just one employee and the magnetic strip of my bank book.
A few years more and my branch was shut down and absorbed into another.
A few years later, even the bigger branches were closing down and forcing customers to use cash machines.
Now, the cash machines themselves are disappearing as banks push users to mobile devices.
That all happened without AI. It was just 'technology' .
Lots of employees were lost in the process. That was a good thing in my book because there were always too many clerks, all being paid for by customers. Other times it isn't so good.
Who hasn't complained about foreign based call centers?
Now the technology is getting AI and the process of reducing employee headcounts is accelerating. Even in call centres.
O2 in Spain makes a point of stating that if you need to contact them, you will be attended to by a human and one in Spain.
A few years from now we won't be able to discern if a call is with a real person or if they are natives of your country.
A few years on from that, even the scammers will be AI.