this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2024
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[–] [email protected] 229 points 2 months ago (2 children)

cutting head count without “firing” people. standard capitalism bullshit.

stop using amazon. let it rot.

[–] [email protected] 119 points 2 months ago (5 children)

It's easy to avoid buying things from Amazon. It's hard to avoid AWS. It would be insane to try to suss out what provider everyone that I buy stuff from uses, and their third party relationships. Regulation is better.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 2 months ago

Yep, try browsing with ublock origin blocking all Amazon domains. Lots of things break because AWS is so large.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

In the old days people used to have their own servers...

And you can still buy them...

And the cloud really isn't cheaper...

But whatever, it's ubiquitous today. Maybe someday people will wake the F up.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Exactly. This is just more failures of govt to constrain and regulate.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

It's easy to avoid buying things from Amazon

I mean... Yes but also no.

Amazon have gone to crap in recent years and has become a more upmarket Wish or Temu. Much of their storefront is full of Chinese knock-off brands these days.

What Amazon does offer is somewhat reliable next (and sometimes same) day delivery. The only way you can get something faster is by travelling to a brick & mortar shop and buying in person.

As for AWS, aren't we forgetting that Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Google, even Alibaba and Huawei have their own cloud solutions?

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

That links says only a quarter did it because they wanted people to quit, so it suggests that chances are this is not the reason Amazon is doing it...and you're posting while claiming it factually proves this is their motivation? Pretty deceiving.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I personally read this as "one quarter admit they did it to get people to quit". If you think these folks are always transparent and honest, think again. They're just trying to say whatever gets them the least amount of bad PR

This is effectively a layoff without benefits.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Which works fine as long as you don't mind keeping your worst employees, while all your best ones quit, which is generally the opposite of how it works during layoffs

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[–] [email protected] 127 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

I enjoy how Amazon talks a big game about how great they are for the environment and their pledge to stop climate change, then they force workers to commute to the office who have been happily doing their jobs over the internet.

[–] [email protected] 63 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yah this is literally the most basic shit any company can do to be more "green", cut costs, have access to a larger worker base...

Nope. Because the CEOs are all more concerned with the commercial real estate market than running their company efficiently.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Because the CEOs are all more concerned with the commercial real estate market than running their company efficiently.

It's shocking how many people have honestly bought this. I mean, I'm sure there is some truth to it and maybe somewhere, someone forced people to come back because of some real estate interests... But the CEO of Amazon almost certainly gains to benefit much more from a rise in price of Amazon stock than any real estate they might own. And even if it was the case, I dont think the board would be very happy about it.

It might be the wrong move, and maybe it is being done to get people to quit, but it's being done because they think it means more money from Amazon.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I think they are mostly doing this as a stealth layoff. It's been a pretty popular strategy lately.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

The joke is, you get the good people to leave first this way. Be it estate or layoff, it's a bad move either way.

So why do they do it still? Only thing i can think of is the powerplay. CEO types are sometimes as developed as a child, mentally.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Yeah and this whole agenda of RTO rolled out worldwide directly after Davos 2023 when a bunch of CEOs were tweeting about it from there. But noticing this makes you a conspiracy theorist.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They illegally fired the very employees who led the effort to pressure the company internally to do more on climate.. All their climate posturing ever since has been bullshit.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/29/amazon-settles-with-employees-who-said-they-were-fired-over-activism.html

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[–] [email protected] 70 points 2 months ago (4 children)

The employees hired during full remote are now going to have to change their lives around going into the office. Tech employees are especially fucked because they either have to stay or they have to attempt to join the flood of tech employees looking for remote jobs (which was caused by the execs doing layoffs at tech companies).

[–] [email protected] 60 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There should be protections against hiring someone remote and then forcing them into the office as soon as you want to lay people off by forcing them to quit so you don't have to compensate them.

[–] namingthingsiseasy 26 points 2 months ago

In some countries, there are already.

In others, it will be up to courts to decide whether this is illegally firing staff. That said, good luck getting equal legal representation to these trillion-dollar companies.

So yes, basically, it's legal.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

That’ll teach us plebs. We’d better start licking some serious Amazon boot so they deign to let some of us earn enough to not die.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

Thats assuming those full remote employees are anywhere near an office.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The beatings will continue until moral improves.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (1 children)

God I hate Amazon now. They're basically Wal-Mart these days with half the results being sponsored (advertisements) - and you see that even if you pay for Prime. There are some things you can only get there, but otherwise, since all e-commerce is converging, I don't see the point of enabling their bad behavior. But whichever global corporate enterprise you take your business to, they will likely have a similar mindset.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 months ago

Fuck Amazon.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Trying to make those yearly office space rentals worth it

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Aren't they still cheaper if nobody uses them?

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago

Ok, but I'm still not going back to wearing pants.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago

They should be charged an emissions tax and worker safety tax since driving to/from work is one of the leading causes of death for working adults

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Seems like covid's overall impact on society won't be as long lived as we thought. The whole work from home thing was almost seen as revolutionary as it would save office space and expenses. But it seems companies care far more for control than even profit.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Companies want profit but the people who run them want control. Sooner or later the companies will reconfigure themselves to benefit the bottom line.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (5 children)

Cool, glad I didn't listen to my parents, who wanted me to work for Amazon. Yeah, I probably could've made a ton more, but I'm making plenty where I'm at.

I work 2x in office, less if I have a somewhat passable reason to not go in. And I can WFH for a few weeks at a time if I need to travel for whatever reason. It's nice working for someone that somewhat respects me.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

"Probably could've made a ton more" - no chance of that working for Amazon.

You dodged a lot of pain and loooong hours, 7 days a week.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago

That's gonna be a no, dawg.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Generally? That's bad leadership.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (5 children)

Maybe somebody has some insight into this: why does this succeed in getting people to quit, since that's the obvious gambit? Why do people not just refuse to come back and get fired for insubordination or whatever? Do you not get unemployment benefits for getting fired for that reason (ignoring that unemployment is a pittance compared to their salaries), or are they packaging these people out with attractive severances or something?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago

Because people need stable incomes and healthcare, so they start applying for jobs and get them. People aren't quitting to be unemployed.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Honestly, IDK. My company is moving their office slightly further away from me. This will add much more commute time because of the location though. I'm already looking for a new job but if I don't find one by then I'm certainly not going in. We worked 100% remote for over 3 years. I'll find out what the consequences are.

My situation will be a bit different though since the office location is moving. Seems unreasonable that they'd be able to deny unemployment because of that.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Depending on the country you live in, you should check for mobility clauses in your contract. In many EU countries moving the location of your work requires an employer to come to a “reasonable” agreement with the employer or treat the request as a redundancy (with redundancy pay etc).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

They need to find their next job first

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It's usually just enough severance to make it worth it. It'll be like a month of pay maybe which is worth 6-8 months of unemployment.

And honestly...if they offer a month or two of health insurance on top, you have to take to avoid the cobra fees.

It's usually an easy choice to take severance.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

Wasn't there talk of a mass strike in the U.S., at some point? We should do that.

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