Amazon Layoffs: Jassy highlighted the importance of fostering a culture characterised by urgency, accountability, swift decision-making, resourcefulness, frugality, and collaboration
Amazon Layoffs: 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.
My favorite part of working at a call center was watching this happen. A c-suite member would ask why we weren't doing X, middle management would scramble to make it happen instead of saying there's a good reason for it, then the c-suite member would show back up 6 months later asking why the hell they were doing something stupid.
But at the same time nothing is really expected of you - by the people above or below you. And you make more money than the people doing the actual work.
Upper management deserves everything it gets. Middle management is often underpaid and expected to do all the jobs of their own plus their superiors.
Some *organisational tasks will always be needed. Middle management does that plus fielding some amount of customer service, plus a lot of what upper management takes credit for.
The system is fucked, but we shouldn’t let the people doing barely anything to earn their yachts turn us against those grinding their own bones to glue the grind-house together.
I'm gonna assume you don't know any better. Not saying there aren't bad or stupid middle managers, but usually the middle manager is the person who got shoved into a "management" position they probably didn't want, and all they really get to do is take all the heat when decisions they didn't make blow up in their face. It also usually comes with false promises of raises but upper management never really intends on giving it.
It's like, top level squeezing the bottom out 101.
In their memo announcing 5 days RTO they also said they'll be increasing contributor to manager ratio. Guess they meant that by firing a bunch of managers
Firing middle managers is a fun way to kill the company. Not that cleaning house is a bad idea. Unfortunately the people making decisions of who to keep and who to let go are usually idiots.
Middle Managers are promoted for two reasons: technical expertise and ass-kissing expertise. Now the technical experts tend to not mix well with incompetent parasitic c-suite types idiots. The ass-kissers are beloved by the c-suite as that is their only role in life.
So when firings come around guess who they get rid of? Then 1-3 years later everyone is shocked when everything starts to fall apart.
This'll probably slow down career growth for a lot of people.
Less facetime and work visibility for everyone below C-Suite. If your boss has 20 other direct reports, how do you stand out for promotions and raises?
Also fewer leadership positions to get promoted to.