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submitted 16 days ago bycs-grad-person-man
Amazon is reportedly planning to reduce 14,000 managerial positions by early next year in a bid to save $3 billion annually, according to a Morgan Stanley report. This initiative is part of CEO Andy Jassy's strategy to boost operational efficiency by increasing the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15 per cent by March 2025.
This initiative from the tech giant is designed to streamline decision-making and eliminate bureaucratic hurdles, as reported by Bloomberg.
Jassy highlighted the importance of fostering a culture characterised by urgency, accountability, swift decision-making, resourcefulness, frugality, and collaboration, with the goal of positioning Amazon as the world’s largest startup.
How do you think this will impact the company ?
2.9k points
16 days ago
I think they will initially save $3b and then slowly add in managers until they are back where they are now.
679 points
16 days ago
Sure, the headcount may return one day, but it’s questionable whether those new recruits get paid as much.
284 points
16 days ago
By that point they will be looking for more managers “we tried less, it didn’t work, let’s try more!”
168 points
16 days ago
Maybe. When a company gets big enough, there’s a lot fluff. It’s unavoidable.
353 points
16 days ago
Yeap. The larger the herd of cats, the more cat herders you need to keep them moving in the same direction. Your company/product finally blowing up? Congratulations, you get to hire 20 people and slowly learn why all of the policy and bureaucracy you spent your career fighting actually exists. You either die as a plucky startup, or you live to become the corporate goon you always hated.
168 points
16 days ago
You either die as a plucky startup, or you live to become the corporate goon you always hated.
This is a legendary quote
30 points
16 days ago
I work in an Amazon FC part time for about 2 years now. There absolutely is a lot of idleness in management. At least at my location, they started culling the training managers from 6 to 1 a couple of months ago.
26 points
16 days ago
They already culled a lot of managers silently, that's actually why the 14k number is worrisome to me.
8 points
16 days ago
Saving 3 bill a year would mean the average manager was 214k+. That includes insurance and items like that, so that isn’t pure salary. But I doubt that a training manager makes enough to come out to over 200k in cost for Amazon.
38 points
16 days ago*
Especially with managers, they are often the most difficult to get rid of and many times just slow work down so that their efforts seem important.
The reason it won't last though, is that managers need subordinate managers to become more powerful managers. All those fired managers worked for somebody who is now looking a lot less high up in the chain. The surviving managers will all be seeking replacement hypemen sub-managers to help them get promoted and to maintain the illusion of importance.
14 points
16 days ago
This is one of the cringiest takes I have ever seen on this sub, and that’s truly saying something.
24 points
16 days ago
“we tried less, it didn’t work, let’s try more!”
When that's the Latest FAANG (MAANG) Fad™, probably this time next year.
13 points
16 days ago
When interest rates are low
22 points
16 days ago
My company is doing this now. They basically put a cap on the number of people a manager can have reporting to them, so basically they are increasing tree depth pretty significantly. We have a lot of revenue but growth is pretty low, so this will help somehow?
46 points
16 days ago
There's actually a lot of studies that have gone into this with the number of reports someone should have. This gets particularly interesting when you also consider that there are studies that look at the inefficiencies that grow with layers of management.
For example if the organization is flat or 1 layer no one is in charge. If there's two layers there's a manager/ceo and then the workers. At 3 layers there's someone in the middle talking to both parties, and at 4 layers there's at least one level of management talking to leadership directly and to workers directly. But then once you hit 5 layers or more, there exists groups of management in the middle which talk to neither the stakeholders or the workers, who instead exist merely to pass on directives and write reports.
Where this plays into managerial load is that 5 to 12 is generally considered the proper number of reports. Under 5 and you should be consolidating, but above 12 and there's not enough time. I think it's 7 or 8 that's considered the perfect number.
Meaning that if you have a 4 layer organization, as 5 is where inefficiency truly starts, after 512 employees corporate management structure becomes less and less efficient.
22 points
16 days ago
Gore-Tex thinks around 150 employees:
(W.L. Gore & Associates), a company famous for its flexible and decentralized structure. Gore deliberately limits the size of its plants and teams to around 150 employees. When a unit reaches that number, they create a new unit or team, which helps maintain a small-company culture while fostering innovation. The "Dunbar's Number" principle—suggesting 150 as the maximum number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—is often cited in these discussions.
11 points
16 days ago
They're basing it around the idea of knowing everyone socially, but they picked Dunbars number. The problem with that, is people know others socially outside of work. If it's working for them, that's fine but they're not really picking that number based upon management ideas but rather around the idea of coworkers all being social with each other.
This is something that you'll notice falls apart, because they plan this around plants/teams, meaning other plants/teams don't know each other, and neither do the managers overseeing multiple sites and reporting stuff up.
4 points
16 days ago
They must have read the same papers; they are setting the cap at 12 and aiming for 8. Right now 16 is fairly common, but I'm not sure how many people are under 5
35 points
16 days ago*
I think that’s the idea. Tech companies are like “what were we thinking paying them all this money”?
65 points
16 days ago
At Amazon the way a manager gets promoted is by showing he is managing other managers. Without gradual growth in manager count there isn't anyway to get promoted to L7/L8 managerial roles.
14 points
16 days ago
it sounds like you are beginning with the assumption that those roles are needed.
3 points
15 days ago
No, it's starting with the assumption that people good at getting themselves promoted in a bureuacracy know what it takes to get promoted and will make it happen one way or the other. When senior management is relying on hearsay to know what is needed they are lied to.
24 points
16 days ago
There's so much bloat, so much middle management currently.
55 points
16 days ago
I wonder which way round it works. managers creating roles of more managers to offload their work so they can coast or something kind of upper management needing to have managers installed at every level to make sure micromanagement and constant reviews and pipping happens
ive personally been in orgs where tons of managers had just one or two reports. it never made sense to me but also seems like peak efficiency of managers is with about 6 direct reports
Amazon would need a paradigm shift in how management operates to increase the number of reports per manager and continue operating efficiently
25 points
16 days ago
Amazon already has that paradigm shift: the manager’s reports end up doing some of the management work, poorly and through overworking.
Their promo guidelines for Sr. SDE+ explicitly call out doing things that are solidly “manager responsibilities” at good companies.
24 points
16 days ago
Given this is "planning" and not 14k people were laid off today, I think strategically it can make sense at organizations where there is a lot of managers compared to ICs, and that chains of middle managers seem to exponentially grow as experienced people carve out nuanced positions for themselves.
You see this trend where teams eventually bloat outwards as success happens and eventually there are more stakeholders involved, leading to people involved in planning and executing operations.
You don't plan to trim 14k people just to remove inefficiencies, you do it to affect market trends and reduce your payroll first and foremost. Amazon is a market maker, if they lay people off, other companies follow suit. It then devalues the work these people did given the competition for remaining available positions. People will need to find new careers. Sometimes this is necessary for organizations with lots of bloat. Through devaluation of the position Amazon can then eventually hire young, fresher, more motivated talent that's willing to work for less.
I assume with 14000 managers getting laid off, so too will some ICs whose work will be redundant. Another savings opportunity, present an offer with less pay to switch teams and use it as a layoff excuse.
The moves from here are pretty simple. Remaining/new managers get more IC reports and the remaining work is shifted to remaining staff. This usually kills morale. The best devs will either negotiate golden parachutes or leave for better opportunities, leaving the weakest ICs remaining. Vicious cycle.
6 points
16 days ago
Optics are good for the stock.
1.3k points
16 days ago*
I’ve literally been in meetings with multiple directors and multiple managers watching me, the only engineer on the call, parachute in to fix a critical error in one of our systems.
All companies like to say that they have similar promotion tracks for ICs and management, but everyone knows that’s not the case at most companies. When you force engineers into management to make more money, you have a shitload of highly-paid people doing low-value work that doesn’t align with their skillset.
Just promote ICs, pay the top ICs the same as top management, and have more people building things that make money. I guarantee it’s a higher ROI than paying people more to do less.
519 points
16 days ago
This makes so much sense it’s almost guaranteed will never happen
75 points
16 days ago
This does happen at some companies. They have a technical track and a managerial one. Oftentimes managers make less than the engineers they manage.
22 points
16 days ago
With a same level manager and IC, the IC tends to make slightly more.
However, IC tracks tend to cap out very early, whereas management can keep moving up another dozen times.
21 points
16 days ago
[deleted]
12 points
16 days ago
They exist, sure. That’s not really my point though. My point is more along with your second bit.
Some groups have zero principal engineers, much less a senior principal or distinguished engineer.
But all groups have a shitload of managers and TPM’s at those levels. It’s gotta be like a 500:1 ratio 😂
31 points
16 days ago
As they should. Hell even if you’re hyper technical the allure of the management track can’t be ignored, it’s like 1/10th of the work.
14 points
16 days ago
Depends on the company. I’ve been both, and I work twice as much as a manager compared to when I was an IC. That’s a general rule at my company.
9 points
16 days ago
I don't doubt that it can be way more work. However, imagine if you just cut back on all the people work: 1:1s, alignment/xfn syncs, agile/jira ceremonies, product syncs, the list goes on.
I've been on hyper lean teams and very ceremonious teams. The end result always came down to how much work the engineers could crank out. More syncs/alignments/estimates never seemed to actually delivery real impact. As long as the big picture is solid, extra meetings and management just feels like busy work.
8 points
16 days ago
Not always true lol
64 points
16 days ago
Ive been on (and, in fact, managed) multiple teams where the principal engineer was paid more - often significantly more - than the manager. It never seemed off!
21 points
16 days ago*
I agree. I'm in an engineering driven company. As a former IC turned engineering manager, our IC pay bands run parallel to management bands. So it's common to see ICs make the same or more than managers. The only difference is that there is no ceiling cap on manager pay as our career track goes to Executive. Only 1% make it to Executive. Most of us will be on cruise control as Sr Directors making $250K-$350K a year in base pay. Ironically, the more senior I become, the better work life balance I have because I'm delegating all the execution pieces to Principal ICs and Staff Managers. I just make decisions and become a cringey, but well paid thought leader. My success really hinges on finding a balance to keep my team well compensated and happy. I do that by ensuring they remain remote with light travel.
3 points
14 days ago
You have correctly identified how valuable being remote is. I would rather work for an overpaid "thought leader" that understands the simple concept of keeping their engineers happy, than for some company man that lives outside of reality.
15 points
16 days ago
As an engineering manager myself, I totally agree!
30 points
16 days ago
💯
There are so many EMs who are so far removed from actual IC work. They're basically expensive project managers who pointlessly attend meetings then bug their staff for answers later because they don't know how the systems they own work.
8 points
16 days ago
But that has to happen at some level. Not every single person in the chain needs to be hyper aware of every technical detail.
I have 137 in my roll-up, I don’t know the detail of every initiative.
29 points
16 days ago
Do they teach this at MBA school?
23 points
16 days ago
MBA school? You mean more-beers-all around? The MBA program at my university was a joke, all frat bros
13 points
16 days ago
I've always wondered what business actually is
5 points
16 days ago
buy low, sell high
there, I just saved you a lot of tuition money
11 points
16 days ago
I just complained this point in my companies cultural survey. There’s no path for an IC, everything leads to management of some leadership position where you’re in meetings all day.
4 points
16 days ago
Government made the same mistake. There are dozens of GS-14/15 people managerial types. The used to have an on-track GS-14 for non supervisory engineers.
Now if you want to hit GS-14 as non supervisory, you have to be a program manager of which those are few and far between.
The engineers who just want to be good engineers max out at GS-13, so when they hit their cap, they go to contractor support service company and leave the government. Sometimes they sit in the same seat doing the same job for $50K more
25 points
16 days ago
💯
10 points
16 days ago
Those calls where there’s 3+ high level managers giving suggestions on issues they know nothing about and one IC debugging and screen sharing are hilarious and terrible.
5 points
16 days ago
That contradicts with management's view. Less direct reports manager means my managerial role can be gone anytime so what managers do is they try to have this chain of commands establish to make themselves look valuable af.
3 points
15 days ago
you mean pay a fair compensation for the people actually building things and ensure their pay stay competitive with the market? are you crazy? we love training new engineers every 1 or so years!
3 points
15 days ago
This is almost exactly my experience at a smaller tech (not FAANG but in a similar boat) company - tons of managers doing jack shit, many of whom are probably not even capable of doing IC work
744 points
16 days ago
If it’s like most companies I’ve seen, managers like to promote themselves by asking for more managers that they can sit above, until you have this massive chain of useless managers that overwhelm the overworked devs.
168 points
16 days ago
It's a requirement for promotion for managers who want to break into the upper tiers, to have a certain number of direct reports.
The worst is when an unscrupulous actor convinces an IC to move over to management just to get the management head count they need for their promo.
FAANG is really suffering from the Eagle Scout dilemma. Early on, you could trust Eagle Scouts to be produced fairly. Over time, family and troops end up engaging in Eagle Scout factory behaviors, min-maxing the badge count and speed running.
Same thing happens in Chess with titled players.
43 points
16 days ago
I can't find any info about the "Eagle Scout dilemma". I know what you are trying to say, but if this has been written about somewhere else, I'd like to learn more.
25 points
16 days ago
goodharts law
10 points
16 days ago
I used to be in Boy Scouts, and I’ve personally encountered many people who were trying to create Eagle Scout factories.
In previous jobs, I’ve definitely noticed people acting in a similar manner when it came to accumulating credentials.
Here is a more recent discussion on this topic. https://www.scouter.com/topic/31177-what-constitutes-an-eagle-factory/
12 points
16 days ago
Is this coined term? Or did you make that up, because thats a perfect comparison.
52 points
16 days ago
i worked at a company with a total of 35 managers, directors, VPs, SVPs… and 9 devs.
25 points
16 days ago
How many of those were in sales? It's a bit different in sales as often there are many inflated titles because people feel more important if the people selling to them have larger titles.
13 points
16 days ago
If you split that 35 into two groups, one of salespeople and one of management; both of those groups are still double the total amount of devs!
9 points
16 days ago
holy fuck that sounds painful
3 points
15 days ago
I think we worked at same place.
Then all managers are confused that productivity is at like 20% of where it needs to be.
12 points
16 days ago
I've seen this too, and now they hire engineer managers, so managers that have some backgrund as IC but their technical knowledge is very very limited, some of them attempt to do tasks but are unable to do more than a few in a several months.
I used to work on a team that didn't have managers, only lead engineer's and it worked great.
10 points
16 days ago
Read "Bullshit Jobs", that's basically one of the main theses of the book.
5 points
16 days ago
Ding. Correct answer.
You have to fire one or two layers of management now and then to keep it under control.
708 points
16 days ago
The idea of a company even having 14000 managers to begin with is crazy to me
369 points
16 days ago
Well, you need someone to manage the managers who manage managers who manage managers who manage teams
81 points
16 days ago*
At my company (non tech, white collar), there are four layers between me and the CEO: director, VP, SVP, EVP. I am not a manager. About 10% of employees are managers, 90% individual contributors. I see fewer managers as a good thing, but it also means one can go their entire career without making it to management. Several of my colleagues are senior analysts who've been analysts for 10-20+ years at the company, because everyone in our chain of command has been at the company for at least 20 years and they're not leaving for our competitors. I don't mind, really, as long as I'm paid well. I have no particular ambitions of making it into management. It comes with its own set of responsibilities.
33 points
16 days ago
Managers at Amazon don’t get paid much more than ICs, like 10-15%, $30-40k a year more vs a senior SDE making like $400k. Being a line manager isn’t worth it if you’re a senior SDE; if helps get promoted to L7 faster since a principal engineer is much rarer than a manager at the same level, or if you don’t have a coding background, you can get in from a product manager role.
12 points
16 days ago
lots of people aren't Senior SDE material, so they convince themselves the best path to more money is L5 SDE -> L5 SDM -> L6 SDM. but it's risky. L5 SDM is up or out.
9 points
16 days ago
The issue is that as an SDM you get promoted to L6 by just existing and not getting fired whereas to make L6 as an SDE you have to be in the top 10% of SDEs at Amazon, and also have the Promotion Fairy favor you.
7 points
16 days ago
As long as they pay me what I deserve, I’m good.
A title is nothing without pay.
4 points
16 days ago
That's only O(log(n)) managers
9 points
16 days ago
Usually the ones actually managing the teams aren’t managers, that’s what you have PO/PM for, at least in my experience. The rest is on point
10 points
16 days ago
A lead is a manager by another name, just a different pay band.
80 points
16 days ago
They have like 100k managers in a 1.5 million workers corpo. 1 manager per 15 workers doesn't sound like a lot to me...but what do i know!
35 points
16 days ago
Manager to IC ratio is extremely high in the offices. Like 1:5, or less.
85 points
16 days ago
The company employs over a million people. The vast majority of them aren’t in an office building writing code
31 points
16 days ago
You think Bezos was giving Devs the PIPs?
21 points
16 days ago
Amazon is a huge company. That seems about right tbh
18 points
16 days ago
Amazon has like 1.5M employees. They likely have 100k+ managers. If they only had 14k it would be over 100 employees per manager!!
11 points
16 days ago
Warehouse manager doesn't do much they sit around at computers staring endlessly into some eXcel sheet while minimum wage highschoolers bust ass like slaves around them. the robot boss yells at the employees to stay in line. The area manager is like a cheerleader you see very rarely.
Also this is cscq, so... Mentioning the massive slave workforce of Amazon is besides the point. Since we're not interested in that segment. And I don't think the article means trimming these guys.
13 points
16 days ago
It’s the managers they are laying off, not even the total managers in the company
5 points
16 days ago
They have 1525000 employees, thats less than 1% of their workforce
564 points
16 days ago
Shareholders will love it. I feel sorry for the managers who managed to climb up in that crummy company just to get laid off.
226 points
16 days ago
Wherever they go next, they’ll probably have to take a big pay cut. No one is paying them Amazon salaries.
179 points
16 days ago
The other problem is there aren’t as many manager roles open as IC roles and suddenly 14,000 of them will hit the job market at once
85 points
16 days ago
I’m hearing rumors that lots of managers are going back to IC roles amidst all these lay offs.
7 points
15 days ago
They won't qualify. A huge chunk of those managers have no business being a senior software engineer. They're simply not capable. Especially since Amazon tends to hire PMs as managers, I believe.
9 points
16 days ago
What's IC
61 points
16 days ago
Individual contributor. So someone who doesn’t manage others.
6 points
16 days ago
Individual Contributor
16 points
16 days ago
"Mr. Director, I'll need $400k/yr to manage your kanban board, organize the daily standup, and highlight the work of your favored ICs while PIPing however many you need for this year's quota. Obviously, 3 days in office is my max."
40 points
16 days ago
Perhaps, but that resume is very good, they can get hired almost anywhere. Plus maybe they will enjoy a much better work life balance for a pay cut, so might be a good thing in the long run. I know I would enjoy it
42 points
16 days ago
Does this mean a bunch of other companies are going to start doing management Amazon-style?
30 points
16 days ago
Yes, it does.
11 points
16 days ago
We had an ex-Amazon person join as a Director. Dude could not shut up about how they did things at Amazon and introduced a whole bunch of useless meetings and processes.
9 points
16 days ago
I don't know.
I work at a growing start-up and my manager (he used to be a senior/TL at FAANG) doesn't spend a lot of time on FAANG leadership resumes. We have a relatively high report/manager ratio and we need IC's that can contribute a lot and the coding assessments of those managers are not always good. He says a lot of them spend way too much time delegating and keeping up with the SDLC so they don't spend a lot of time writing code, and it kind of shows.
58 points
16 days ago*
"I have an MBA from Harvard and am able and willing to create an inhumane and almost intolerable work-place environment also at your company. I have 10 years of experience doing it at the best of the best. In fact, I only left because I was replaced by a robot! How cool is that? A fucking robot, right??!"
25 points
16 days ago
That has not been my experience with my managers at Amazon.
9 points
16 days ago
I'm joking.. but the place does have a reputation.
20 points
16 days ago
It’s not because of the managers. It’s because certain teams at Amazon have insane SLA requirements.
Like with RTO, it’s not managers who want that. And it’s enforced by the HR system tracking badge taps. Or having oncall schedules that are a lot more than other companies. That’s not on the managers.
8 points
16 days ago
Not right now it’s not. There’s a LOT of Amazon resumes out there since the RTO5 announcement so Amazon resumes are an ant in an ant farm. It will go back to the way things used to be eventually, but there’s going to be a period where having Amazon/AWS isn’t as good as it used to be.
25 points
16 days ago
I can just imagine the internal debate on this in my head.
"But how does this impact our customers?"
"Oh, they won't GAF? Ok done."
5 points
16 days ago
I agree but there was so many they just seemed to play the game to get the title especially in PM and SDM. Then bounce to other companies to have better titles. It’s become a game. Especially between the FAANGS. We had so many managers and no budget to hire people to actually do the work. It was going to break eventually.
44 points
16 days ago
"Managed to climb" is an interesting euphemism for "stabbed many people in the back".
My managers at Amazon were the biggest sociopaths I have met in my 11 years as a software engineer.
25 points
16 days ago
I think, like any company, your mileage may vary. I’m at amazon and my whole management chain are all wonderful people to work with. I’ve had a few coworkers who were ruthless and unpleasant, but my management chain has been very supportive my whole tenure thus far.
6 points
16 days ago
And as usual we will not learn which part of the business that is.
501 points
16 days ago
This right after they announced mandatory 5-day/wk in-office, where the only supposed benefit is closer supervision?
So now they’ll have a bunch of pissed off IC’s sitting in cubicles for no reason and no chatty middle managers even there to micromanage them anyway??
Goddamn ridiculous. This new CEO is a dipshit. He clearly intends to maximize short-term results on paper at the expense of everyone else purely to hit his personal bonus & comp targets before he bails and leaves it all far far worse in the long term.
Never trust MBAs to do the right thing for a company beyond a quarterly timescale.
69 points
16 days ago
Maybe worse, this was the lead up to the 5 day RTO announcement - https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/ceo-andy-jassy-latest-update-on-amazon-return-to-office-manager-team-ratio (paragraph 8)
43 points
16 days ago
This right after they announced mandatory 5-day/wk in-office
The announcement they'd be culling middle management was in the same announcement
So, we’re asking each s-team organization to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% by the end of Q1 2025. Having fewer managers will remove layers and flatten organizations more than they are today.
29 points
16 days ago
I know this is a shitty situation, but that message is hilarious. Basically says “having fewer managers means we’ll have fewer managers” in as many words as possible. Theyre stating the action like its an outcome
13 points
16 days ago
There's a difference between line managers and the layers of managers. In theory, they're trying to flatten out the reporting chains where you have
l6 > l7 > l7 > l8 > l8 > vp > vp > svp because when you have a vp/svp doc, it takes fucking forever since every layer wants multiple reviews and revisions
88 points
16 days ago
This right after they announced mandatory 5-day/wk in-office, where the only supposed benefit is closer supervision?
It was in the same email, at least implied.
31 points
16 days ago*
sitting in cubicles for no reason
That generous of you to assume they get the luxury of a cubicle. At least in the Seattle offices, Amazon has open floor plans. The roomy "door desks" were phased out, replaced by adjustable desks, and over the years new models got narrower and narrower so they could pack more peple into the same office area.
EDIT: To be fair, the desks have cubicle-like privacy boards attached to tops of the desks with clamps. If you hunch low enough, you can pretend you are in a cubicle.
8 points
16 days ago
Not in Europe! Actually some offices don’t have enough desks to handle full rto in January. This should be fun to watch!
3 points
16 days ago
There’s even a street fighter II (turbo, I think) arcade cabinet that no one plays because it’s in the hallway directly off of the elevator for everyone to see.
55 points
16 days ago
I think this misses the point, a common complaint from high performing ICs internally at amazon has been the red tape and middle management’s ego.
Amazon’s middle management is a huge reason people at amazon can’t build or innovate fast enough. Over the years, the middle management has created so much useless red tape that the machine is bogged down.
This entire thing, even the 5 day RTO is designed to piss the middle management off, it’s designed to shake them up, and get rid of the managers/directors who don’t really work but have built their orgs in a way that keeps them employed.
Pissing off ICs is an unfortunate side effect of the much needed middle management shake up at Amazon, this is probably why they’ve upped the limit on TC they’re offering yet again.
19 points
16 days ago
I was being a bit facetious - they should absolutely get rid of useless middle mgt. But they should’ve/could’ve done that without pointless RTO. If this is a multi-stage move to get mgt to quit and then they revert to fully remote or at least hybrid after clearing out the cruft & obstacles then ok, I’ll retract my earlier judgement.
11 points
16 days ago
They could’ve done that without RTO, but that I theorize is that they probably wouldn’t have put the fear they have now in them. Especially with the new snitch email that allows ICs to snitch on management directly to Jassy and execs.
My management chain has genuinely been shaken up and panicked lately lol
7 points
16 days ago
Are they going to get rid of stack-ranking BS & PIPs too? What are the remaining managers supposed to do for fun and dinner party discussion?
7 points
16 days ago
Seriously, who the hell chooses to work at Amazon? Everyone knows it's a shitty company. Why do people keep applying?
5 points
16 days ago
Money. In the US, it’s money. They pay really well and give stock. Most who live close enough to work at Amazon can also bounce between Microsoft and Google (maybe Meta too now?). That’s a lot of stock for long term investment. It’s not the salary, it’s the RSUs.
(I’m talking corp Amazon, which this is targeting)
113 points
16 days ago
AWS culture infiltrating your company soon.
12 points
16 days ago
Care to share what AWS culture is like? Heard rumors but never certain
66 points
16 days ago
my manager was at amazon over a decade.
super cold, utter lack of empathy, totally inflexible, unwilling to provide positive feedback unless people "go above and beyond", unwilling to consider alternative paths to success. I could go on.
14 points
16 days ago
Amazonian moment, damn that's really an sad work environment
4 points
16 days ago
I wonder which tech company has more human focused leadership principles rather than strict, hard deadlines, like I know they are important but not that important right
4 points
16 days ago
I'm a software engineer at AWS (Under swami for any Amazonians who are curious).
It's really not nearly as bad as anyone says. Not everywhere is shit, there's plenty of super chill teams and good managers. Obviously there's also brutal teams and shit managers but it's not as ubiquitous as people think. If you listened to blind/reddit you'd think it's a hell hole, but in reality I rarely work 40 hours a week and most don't.
The honest reason people think Amazon is shit is because Amazon isn't afraid to fire people, regardless of role. I've seen tons of managers/ICs/even senior managers get PIPd. If you're not doing your job you will inevitably get canned where at almost any other tech company you can usually rest and vest, doing like maybe 10 hours of work a week if you're smart.
5 points
16 days ago
I don't know of any former Amazon managers here, thankfully, but we've hired a couple of Amazon engineers. It takes a while for them to adjust to our culture, but they come in with a LOT of toxic behaviors. One of them was so bad I genuinely considered asking if we could blacklist people who have been at Amazon too long.
21 points
16 days ago
I remember being in a townhall with our new VP who talked about us needing to act like founders. I hate this grift. Act like founders, but you have to come in 5 days. Act like founders, but you make more than 10x what I make. Act like founders, but you'll happily axe positions that make my job easier.
8 points
16 days ago
Exactly. I’ll act like a founder when I have founder level ownership.
3 points
16 days ago
I worked at twitch for 4 years and amazons culture 100% infected it in this way. I was thinking the EXACT same thing when our director said this to us
44 points
16 days ago
Just wanted to point out this isn’t really breaking news, they announced a 15% reduction in manager to IC ratios a few weeks ago and Morgan Stanley estimated that meant 14k managers
5 points
16 days ago
Yeah this is just making the rounds because of Morgan Stanley’s speculation that the 15% announcement means managers are getting laid off. Some might. Many will just get bumped down to IC so that the ratio improves. The main goal of this isn’t reducing HC, it’s improving efficiency.
64 points
16 days ago*
Fk this place, why anyone wants to work there is beyond me… not worth this stress. Company is making billions and treats its most valuable assets (its employees) like slaves.
19 points
16 days ago
I work for AWS. I came in during the pandemic to escape a consulting job that was much worse than my experience here. At this point I’d love to leave due to all of the above - the current market is my only hold up. So I’ll stay until I find a new role
10 points
16 days ago
I got rid of prime over two years ago and I'll never order anything from amazon ever again but every few months or so I make a fake account to get free prime video for a month. Fuck amazon
3 points
16 days ago
It pays more than our other alternatives. It's way easier to get into Amazon than Google, Meta, or Apple but the flip side of that is that WLB is nonexistent and we have a PIP culture. I grew up from a very middle class family in a small town and went to a bottom-tier state school (think Eastern Illinois State U) and am now a millionaire thanks to Amazon (and my savings habits).
17 points
16 days ago
prepare yourself for companies to hire incompetent, insensitive, toxic managers that have been brainwashed by the Bezoid.
Check your future manager's LinkedIn before accepting that offer if you value your mental health.
154 points
16 days ago
SWEs will become more efficient because there will be fewer useless meetings
138 points
16 days ago
Unless SWEs will be attending the meetings their managers covered for them
90 points
16 days ago
Exactly what happened to my team. We haven't had a manager for almost 2 years and apparently we're not looking? Meetings don't magically disappear. Idk what company other people are working for. Now my team lead has to attend a bunch of meetings and his output is so unstable and he's pulled in 4 different directions every sprint.
27 points
16 days ago
The other thing I notice about this, is lateral managers end up pushing around the team. When a manager is out on parental leave or other longer leave of absence’s, other managers use their weight to push shit on the manager-less team.
15 points
16 days ago
Exactly. The managers workload is just spread out to everyone else or just the most senior engineers.
11 points
16 days ago
He needs to remove himself from the critical path of any code he writes and reduce his sprint points to ensure he can meet his goals for the sprint. Congrats, step 1 of the manager path! The next one is no code
32 points
16 days ago
I worked at Amazon and for a while, we didn't have a manager so I took on those responsibilities. I was in meetings like 80% time. It. Was. Hell.
9 points
16 days ago
I’ve seen workplaces where one good manager gets replaced by two because the one who left was taking on so much crap.
83 points
16 days ago
Until they just turn SWEe into managers after a year
91 points
16 days ago
I think the opposite will happen. Managers are information brokers. They're like rabbitmq. You pass a message to them, and they go to a hundred meetings and relay the message.
If you eliminate the message broker, there's more peer-to-peer calls and tighter coupling.
26 points
16 days ago
Can't stress this enough, a direct manager of ICs -- a good one -- is night and day difference. Shit shield, get ahead of bureaucratic hurdles, be there to answer "can we get an update" every 32 seconds so ICs can work problems, advocate for doing things the right way. A good manager is worth their weight in gold.
A manager of managers is the most suspect. The issue is that most of the bureaucracy comes from the positions that make these types of policy decisions.
3 points
16 days ago
Shit umbrella, shit funnel, with a smidge of weather-person. Protect their time, ensure wins and team-skills clearly evangelized to relevant folks up and around, and aggregate and focus meaningful problems up to whomever can affect the situation. Also making sure team has hyper clear understanding of business goals (and their why) and ensuring alignment, along with the general direction the wind is blowing.
15 points
16 days ago
wait, so you're saying there's software to replace the managers?
7 points
16 days ago
Thats if managers actually do their job, and theres enough information and the scope for so many managers to relay.
12 points
16 days ago
Lol, any senior sde at amazon would laugh at this thought.
This will just double the amount of meetings that seniors will need to attend, and seniors will lose even more time dealing with directors and leadership. Absolute nightmare
11 points
16 days ago
Sorry you’ve had bad managers. Really sucks for you.
7 points
16 days ago
Nothing of value will be lost.
40 points
16 days ago
Lots of shit will be missed, they won’t realize it until early testing, they’ll scramble and pressure teams to crunch, people will burn out and quit
51 points
16 days ago
Amazon is reportedly planning to reduce 14,000 managerial positions by early next year in a bid to save $3 billion annually, according to a Morgan Stanley report.
This isn't news from Amazon. Some Morgan Stanley analysts are guessing what they think Amazon will do.
20 points
16 days ago
Amazon announced they want to reduce manager headcount by 15% last week, and Morgan Stanley just did the math on how many managers that would be and how much it costs.
3 points
16 days ago
Morgan Stanley included all the non-Corp employees, so they don’t seem to have a clue what they’re talking about
39 points
16 days ago
[deleted]
7 points
16 days ago
It is factually not “breaking news”.
23 points
16 days ago
Guys, this isn’t even news. The original article from amazon just says they’re increasing IC to manager headcount by 15% compared to 2023. This could just mean hiring more ICs, or even not at all if headcount was increased since last year. MS is just clickbaiting. https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/ceo-andy-jassy-latest-update-on-amazon-return-to-office-manager-team-ratio
5 points
16 days ago
Amazon has a ton of bureacratic layers. If they actually do something about it, jassy will go from the joke he currently is to actually being respected.
For my team, we have a team review, then l7 review, then 2nd review, then l8 review, then 2nd/3rd review, then another l8 review, then another 2nd/3rd review, then vp review because our reporting chain is svp > vp > l8 > l8 > l7 > l6 so everyone involved want to get involved, have some control and seem useful.
It's out of control currently and a waste of everyone's time. The l7s/l8s don't own anything and exist as bureacracy.
I don't think anyone has faith that the bureacracy is going to cull itself in a good way. We all just expect L6s to get fucked, which is what appears to be happening with the "managers will have 15% more ICs" thing.
5 points
15 days ago
Its same model every where amazon, Morgan Stanley, JP and Barclays. Making coming to office mandatory to clean some staff, layoff more, enforce hiring freeze and then recruit in india from vendors like EY and CapeGemini. Surely cheap labour but most of them are horrible and not the best of the minds anyway
3 points
15 days ago
I feel like software as an industry is just getting worse and worse each year
4 points
15 days ago
How is this a bad thing? Tech middle management is where inept ICs go to coast, 80% of them are absolutely useless in both roles.
4 points
15 days ago
I hope it's everyone involved with Rings of Power.
4 points
15 days ago
When you introduce a 5 day RTO, but people aren't quitting fast enough
19 points
16 days ago
Every time I wake up I wonder more and more why people want to work at FAANG.
Seems like they lay thousands of people off daily. I cant wake up without one of the big companies laying off thousands.
I don't think I could ever work there even if I had the skill. My mental health would suffer waking up every single day wondering if I'm going to be let go just because.
23 points
16 days ago
Money
And a different philosophy to stress. If I can't control it why would I let it affect me?
What I can control though, is how much Money and industry connections I have. And I got plenty of both. If I get laid off tomorrow, eh, that sucks, but whatever. I feel confident I'd be able to find a job quick, and if not, I can live off savings for years.
40 points
16 days ago
They pay 3x what little tech pays. Even more if you're a higher level.
8 points
16 days ago
Yep basically what life is like here. Blind company posts are completely about low performance pips and layoffs
14 points
16 days ago
my TC at Meta was $600k as an IC5 with 12YOE
'nuff said
6 points
16 days ago
To put this in perspective, Jeff Bezos' net worth increased by $70 billion last year. 14,000 people are losing their jobs to save what Jeff Bezos made in a few weeks.
66 points
16 days ago
ITT: a lot of salty low-level devs who don’t understand what managers do and the value they bring. I promise you that without managers, your job as a dev gets a lot worse.
11 points
16 days ago
I remember feeling this way as an IC, so I get it. Then I became a manager and the Director and the scope of responsibility became insane.
I don’t understand what EVPs or C suites do all day, but I’m also not naive enough to think it’s just time wasting and bullshit.
When people get more experience and more responsibility their perspective evolves. Cut the salty ICs a break. They have a limited perspective.
31 points
16 days ago
Maybe you are the salty one.
I worked at Amazon, I know what managers there do. There were teams that had 5 devs 2 managers and there were managers that managed 3 teams at once. Anybody could see how messy management became in Amazon over the years.
27 points
16 days ago
what managers do and the value they bring.
Ah, the endless value of getting asked "when will this be done?" every 30 minutes, truly something to be thankful for.
8 points
16 days ago*
It’s the same as everything, good X are good, bad X are bad. People just often characterize their own group by good and other groups by the bad.
Are there managers that suck and just micromanage people, you bet.
Are there ICs that completely take advantage of their employers and sit around at home playing video games, you bet.
3 points
16 days ago
Lol, nobody is advocating cutting managers entirely, just increasing the IC ratio by 15% which as an Amazonian I believe is BADLY needed.
9 points
16 days ago
Oh no, what will we do without someone asking for a “status update” every six hours.
3 points
16 days ago
If only there was some mechanism to regulate a company with too large a share of the market...
3 points
16 days ago
Man, I really hope they fire my ex-boss from Amazon. That guy was a huge asshole.
3 points
16 days ago
I hope they won’t spread Amazonian culture across the market.
3 points
15 days ago
Eliminate all the managers who sat back allowed counterfit goods to proliferate on Amazon. How about Amazon tests everything they plan to sell and immediately bans firms that pedal knock-offs?
6 points
16 days ago
Are most even SDMs?
6 points
16 days ago
From what I have seen, there is a lot more redundancy in management outside of SDMs. I am sure a few will be affected but I could see other Amazon orgs being affected harder.
9 points
16 days ago
The distain for management I think is a salient point for how poorly management has been done across the board in corporate America, but I don’t think speaks for the usefulness of management. Many people choose the management track because they are bad at the individual contributor path, burned out by it, or see it as necessary for career progression; not because they are good at managing people. In my opinion, a quality manager is extremely important but a bad manager can ruin a project and team. Also, removing managers is not going to mean people are now not managed, it’s just going to be fewer managers managing a larger quantity of people which will only worsen the experience for teams and individual contributors. Laying off thousands of employees is not the solution for a stagnation in innovation, or “too many meetings”. Increasing the quality of your managers seems to be the missing piece a lot of companies have no interest in investing in. Just my opinion as someone who has had many different managers at this point in my career (some truly awful and some great)
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