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Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly by 05bmckay

Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly by 05bmckay

Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly by 05bmckay

34 Comments

  • Post Author
    justmarc
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 9:59 pm

    So they finally figured out most managers are not just useless, but literally a drag to the company and progress?

  • Post Author
    boredatoms
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 10:03 pm

    They’ll just hire more managers again in 18months

  • Post Author
    iLoveOncall
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 10:03 pm

    This is old news and refers to the 15% figure that was announced last year (more than 6 months ago!) and for which the "layoffs" are already completed.

    Overall, nothing at all happened, managers looked after their own kind and the worst that happened for some was having to go back to IC positions.

    The article is most likely AI generated since it says this was announced "last month" and the article is from March, but the real announcement was September 2024:

    https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/ceo-andy-jassy…

  • Post Author
    jedberg
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 10:04 pm
  • Post Author
    bagels
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 10:04 pm

    Who lays off the engineers now?

  • Post Author
    sampton
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 10:06 pm

    Most managers are human ticket classifiers.

  • Post Author
    elif
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 10:08 pm

    I imagine one thread of the logic is like dang, AI is only producing mediocre work this year. What can we replace where mediocrity is acceptable… How about a role whose primary function is interhuman language.. where we can fallback on the humans involved (engineers, c levels) naturally catching and correcting mistakes?

  • Post Author
    lysace
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 10:12 pm

    Amazon (the online retailer nowadays mostly hawking Chinese alphabet-salad-named brands) and/or AWS the cloud service behemoth?

    I continue to find it so bizarre that they are the same company.

  • Post Author
    zombiwoof
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 10:13 pm

    How many H1b or are they getting rid of just Americans?

  • Post Author
    androiddrew
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 10:14 pm

    #shareholder-value

  • Post Author
    Aurornis
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 10:16 pm

    This is weird blogspam based on a Business Insider article from October of last year, which was based on a quote from Amazon's CEO in September of last year: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-could-cut-managers-sa…

    TL;DR:

    > CEO Andy Jassy said last month that he wanted to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% by the end of the first quarter of 2025.

    It appears the rest is speculation and hypothesizing from analysts, which is why they're quoting Morgan Stanley as a source.

  • Post Author
    bb88
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 10:16 pm

    I'm going to make the observation that politics in a company is caused by management. The more "politics" you have at a company, the more you pay in a "political tax". Effort which should benefit the company is delayed or made harder as employees have to bob and weave to get through the politics.

    I do believe if you want real culture change in a company, the best way to do it is to show managers the door, because that's how you got there in the first place.

    Edited to add:

    I'm not saying get rid of management. I'm saying get rid of bad management. And if your bad management is a malignant tumor, well, it's too late to fix it manager by manager — because they've internalized how to game the system for themselves.

  • Post Author
    uoaei
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 10:17 pm

    I've heard that the managers there aren't nearly as big a problem as the incentive structures that are imposed on managers. The competitiveness within the ranks compromises the office culture. This was explained to me as the origin of the plague of PIPs.

  • Post Author
    wkat4242
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 10:17 pm

    Haha a friend was just recommending I apply for a job there. I told her hell no. It's one of the worst in big tech. Probably second worst after twitter.

    The next one she came up with was Microsoft lol. I work with them a lot and I hate it.

    I work for an enterprise now but a pretty decent European one. I don't think I could work for a US big tech company.

  • Post Author
    johnwheeler
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 10:18 pm

    With the rise of AI, my disdain for managers has gone up. I don't think it's because AI has made managers redundant. It's because AI is making me redundant and I'm realizing they've kind of _always_ been redundant.

  • Post Author
    VincentEvans
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 10:18 pm

    I am curious how do you just hire 14,000 managers at the cost of $3.5B yearly more than you needed?

    Maybe they should fire the guy responsible for THAT.

  • Post Author
    funnyAI
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 10:19 pm

    Just a few weeks ago I was contacted by Amazon recruiter and refused for exactly this reason. I expect more layoffs as they figure out they don't need this many engineers after all. They will turn into money pumping google search analog.

  • Post Author
    anon776
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 10:20 pm

    If you do the maths, the average manager receives 250k a year in benefits.

  • Post Author
    dakial1
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 10:29 pm

    I tend to agree with Amazon leadership here, as they increase the management layer on a company, the team accountability and ownership gets lost. A more horizontal company is able to do more (per capita) and faster.

    The tricky part is what to do when you scale, as you can't simply leave teams to their own devices as they will run their separate ways, so you do more and faster but in the wrong direction.

    But then again, when you add management layer you start a chain reaction that creates this complex cake that might stop everything from happening.

    It is a complex balance.

  • Post Author
    jimt1234
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 10:35 pm

    > Amazon has launched a “bureaucracy tipline” …

    Sounds like Jassy has gone full Elon. I'm guessing a chainsaw for the next earnings report.

  • Post Author
    throwanem
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 10:41 pm

    Imagine mistaking this for "getting rid of management," rather than kicking off a battle royale to backfill those roles with only the most efficiently, consciencelessly bloodthirsty aspirants to the power vacuum so created.

  • Post Author
    hintymad
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 10:45 pm

    This is also more than just saving a few billions of dollars but making a giant like Amazon more efficient, especially when it comes to making decisions. It's just too soul crushing to have a dozen of people who spend all day gatekeeping each project instead of building anything.

  • Post Author
    alberth
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 10:58 pm

    For context:

      Total # Employee:  1,556,000
      Planned # Layoff:     14,000  (or 0.9%)
    
    

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(company)

  • Post Author
    basisword
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 10:59 pm

    I don't understand the shit 'managers' get on here. I've been in this industry for 15+ years and with one or two rare exceptions every manager has been great.

    They respect my time, when I need something they're incredibly helpful, and they care about my career development.

    IMO the culling over managers over the past few years is really a way to make sure you don't have someone you can discuss career development, promotion, and pay increases with. I have very honest conversations with my managers about these things regularly. If I had to deal with someone a few layers above I doubt I'd have the same success.

    Another 'benefit' for the company in culling managers is that the manager track generally has higher pay at each level. Understandable given it seems to involve more time commitment and dealing with people can be much more tricky than dealing with code. Less options for IC's to transition == lower salary burden. Reduce the number of people on the manager track and you reduce the amount of salary an employee can hope to attain. I've definitely been put off switching from IC to manager because I feel the jobs are less secure over the last few years.

  • Post Author
    steveBK123
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 11:08 pm

    Interesting that the math tells us AMZN average manager compensation is $250k?

    Seems.. low?

  • Post Author
    CaffeineLD50
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 11:24 pm

    Awesome. About time these layoffs start making sense.

    If anyone can be replaced by AI it's the PHBs

  • Post Author
    davidrupp
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 11:26 pm

    SDE, just passed ten years at Amazon; opinions my own, obvs. The three best managers I've worked with in my career have all been at Amazon (you know who you are). Also the three worst (ditto). And the respective bars were pretty [high | low] coming in. Just like everywhere else I've been, it comes down to the individual. Amazon, as far as I can tell, have never tried to homogenize management. Your team delivers? You're in.

  • Post Author
    subpixel
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 11:50 pm

    Where I happen to work management is like the clergy in a regime that grants them much power, but no control.

    They may care about each member of their 'congregation' and provide 'support' where they can, but ultimately they know their own head depends on staying true to doctrine and interpreting edicts.

  • Post Author
    karmakaze
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 11:58 pm

    My experience is that most managers are between good and okay, some are great, countably few are obstacles. What's different are many layers of middle managers which I don't deal with directly. A fair number, though not much fault of their own create broken telephone communication pathways. Some are actively out for themselves and growing their little empires, alignment be damned. It's good to maintain good technical communication signals with fewer mis-translation points, so flatter orgs are more agile.

  • Post Author
    elicksaur
    Posted March 17, 2025 at 11:59 pm

    Topic seems like a bait for your typical HN user.

    If you dislike managers generally, why would you think Amazon is firing them for all the reasons you personally dislike them as a class?

    What is Amazon’s actual motive here?

  • Post Author
    karaterobot
    Posted March 18, 2025 at 12:22 am

    Note that 14,000 managers amounts to 13% of all managers at Amazon. So, this isn't them flattening the hierarchy and making teams autonomous, self-organizing squads. Or, at least, this article doesn't make that claim.

    > Amazon is set to cut around 14,000 managerial positions by early 2025, aiming to save between $2.1 billion and $3.6 billion annually.

    If the number is $2.1 to $3.6, I wonder why the headline went with $3.5. Weird.

  • Post Author
    tamaharbor
    Posted March 18, 2025 at 12:56 am

    I was a really poor manager. I hated every minute of it.

  • Post Author
    johnohara
    Posted March 18, 2025 at 12:57 am

    Saving $2.1B to $3.6B means the 13,834 management positions pay between $150,000 to $260,000 per year. Plus benefits and other incentives I suppose.

    These are not the workers who travel from warehouse to warehouse living in their RV's.

    It makes me wonder if Amazon's AI implementations are starting to move up the food chain as was generally predicted for the U.S. economy 5 years ago.

  • Post Author
    jdmg94
    Posted March 18, 2025 at 1:19 am

    Good riddance, there's too many layers of management for a company that touts "It's always day 1", and once you become a manager you can only fail upwards.

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