In AI-related moves, companies are stepping up job cuts.
Amazon Message to Employees
This morning, Amazon gave an Update On Our Organization on its corporate blog.
I want to let you know that we’re making additional organizational changes across Amazon that will impact some of our teammates. I recognize this is difficult news, which is why I’m sharing what’s happening and why.
As I shared in October, we’ve been working to strengthen our organization by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy. While many teams finalized their organizational changes in October, other teams did not complete that work until now.
The reductions we are making today will impact approximately 16,000 roles across Amazon, and we’re again working hard to support everyone whose role is impacted. That starts with offering most US-based employees 90 days to look for a new role internally (timing will vary internationally based on local and country level requirements). Then, for teammates who are unable to find a new role at Amazon or who choose not to look for one, we’ll provide transition support including severance pay, outplacement services, health insurance benefits (as applicable), and more.
Some of you might ask if this is the beginning of a new rhythm – where we announce broad reductions every few months. That’s not our plan. But just as we always have, every team will continue to evaluate the ownership, speed, and capacity to invent for customers, and make adjustments as appropriate. That’s never been more important than it is today in a world that’s changing faster than ever.
I’m grateful for how our teams continue to deliver – for customers, for each other, and for the incredible things we’re building together.
Thank you,
Beth
Beth Galetti is Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology at Amazon.
This news is not unexpected. Amazon workers have been expecting this axe to fall since October, fearing the move.
Amazon to Shut Down All Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh Stores
In other Amazon news, the Wall Street Journal reports Amazon to Shut Down All Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh Stores
Amazon.com is closing all of its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh physical stores in a shift to focus on its online same-day delivery service and expand its Whole Foods Market business.
The e-commerce giant said Tuesday that its branded stores failed to deliver a distinctive customer experience with an economic model that could be scaled up successfully.
The closures will include 57 Fresh stores and 15 Amazon Go locations, according to an Amazon spokeswoman. The company said some of its shuttered Amazon-branded bricks-and-mortar stores would be converted into Whole Foods stores. It said it would open more than 100 new Whole Foods stores in coming years.
The announcement marks the latest pivot in Amazon’s more than decadelong effort to break into physical retail.
Fresh, which offers a more mass-market selection than upscale Whole Foods, was overhauled in recent years but ultimately failed to win over enough customers with its high-tech shopping carts and cheaper prices.
Recently, Amazon, which acquired Whole Foods for about $13.5 billion in 2017, has been experimenting with expanding mass-market offerings in its stores while preserving the brand’s identity as a purveyor of healthful food. The experiments have robots picking up items such as soda, junk food or detergent from storerooms to deliver to customers looking to shop beyond the aisles of nut milk and organic pasta.
Amazon Go’s convenience stores, which let customers check out electronically without waiting in line, also never resonated with shoppers on a large scale, and the company has trimmed its fleet by more than half since 2023. The company does, however, license its Just Walk Out technology to retailers at more than 360 locations in five countries, including colleges and universities, sports arenas, hospitals and airports.
I never expected Fresh to succeed. Amazon cut its losses early. Try something, then move on when it fails is smart policy.
Pinterest to Lay Off Up to 15% of Workforce in Restructuring
Also consider Pinterest to Lay Off Up to 15% of Workforce in Restructuring
Pinterest (PINS) said it would cut up to about 15% of its workforce, or roughly 700 jobs, as part of a restructuring aimed at pivoting resources toward higher-growth areas such as artificial intelligence.
The social-media platform on Tuesday said the restructuring will help support its transformation initiatives, including reallocating resources to AI-focused roles and teams, prioritizing AI‑powered products, and accelerating the revamp of its sales and go-to-market approach.
Pinterest makes money through advertising on its platform, and the company has been hurt by a recent pullback in spending among larger companies. Advertising pricing declined 24% in the third quarter as U.S. retailers navigated “tariff-related margin pressure,” Chief Financial Officer Julia Donnelly said in November.
Shares, which were recently trading 1% lower in premarket trading, have lost roughly 23% of their value over the past year.
The weakness in ad pricing has prompted the company to turn focus toward AI, as pressure on advertising spending is expected to continue weighing on revenue in the near term. Pinterest is aiming to boost revenue with long-term investment in AI, focused on helping users find and purchase products in the images they pin.
There is no driver for job growth that I can see. Mass layoffs aside, if you have a job you generally keep it.
But if you lose a job it is very hard to find another. I have some new charts on this idea later today or tomorrow.
The Fed meets in a few hours and will not cut rates. Trump will immediately howl.
The press conference, Powell’s statements, and dissents (expect at least one), will provide more information than the opening statement.
UPS announced a second round of layoffs. This one will be 30K. No matter how low the Fed cuts rates, AMZN and UPS are not about to rehire all those employees.
Don’t need no stinkin’ employees. That is what robots are for!
Transfer these employees to Whole Foods! You used to manipulate spreadsheets. Now you get to arrange the oranges.
JPow sticks it to Trump – no fed cuts!
Bwahahahahaha!
Poo is flying, and little Marco has ducked behind the couch for cover, only to find JD back there doing something unspeakable…
Lol. I’ve worked most of my adult life for F500 companies and that’s standard operating procedure at every firm. A reorg every 12 to 18 months for seemingly no purpose whatsoever except for some new exec to come in and be seen making changes and justify his/her salary.
The other standard operating procedure is to jettison everyone over the age of 50 as quickly as possible since this is the age the employee is the costliest in terms of salary and health care costs. Yeah, it’s illegal but that doesn’t stop anyone from doing it. Now they do it with generous severance packages so your choice is to sue and risk getting nothing or take the severance package and walk away with something.
I am so glad I am done with this nonsense this year. The irony is that as this country heads into a demographic death spiral, corporations are going to undergo sheer chaos with not enough people to do the work. AI might be great when it works right but when it inevitably breaks down it will cause massive business crashes. Look no further than when a firm gets hit with a cyber attack, multiply that x10 when AI outage happens and every business across America is dependent on it.
I can already hear the corporate screams and see the big crashes. Just wait, watch and laugh.
Fire up that exit plan !
I forgot to mention that whole, “return to office” plan which was complete BS if you’re laying off 16,000 office people. I guess building “culture” wasn’t that important after all. Lol.
Since noxious fumes are in the news, I don’t miss the commuter trains with some old bag smelling of Channel # 5, some young hipster reeking of AXE and boss babes using acetone on their nails.
i gave that up in my early 30s. LIRR and also nyc subway and also metro north. soul destroying. i remember some old man i was pals with telling me in my late 20s. he was ancient. was an accountant. calculated the 45 years he had commuted on LIRR and subway an ungodly number of years of his life. his name was Dubitsky. he told me not to make that mistake. it was stupid. he said only thing dumber was fighting in the world wars. both. i took that nice old man’s advice.
If you have a lot of employees over 50, then employer medical exps can rise.
In that age group, the spouses’ health is a factor, too -the employer is covering them.
The thing is, we’ve been in a demographic death spiral by which the worker population across the US is getting older so there is going to be more and more “older” workers at firms over the next decade and beyond. If the policy remains the same, then there will be fewer and fewer “older” corporate employees working.
Obviously, it’s not sustainable so the firms will have to pay up for salaries and healthcare or do without. it’s lose-lose either way.
They may just stop offering health ins.
It’s going direct to the people I thought?
All true.
You won’t miss the corporate nonsense found in sentences like “will continue to evaluate the ownership, speed, and capacity to invent for customers” or titles like Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology. I know I don’t. Imagine conjuring up such claptrap and making shittons of money doing so, while trying to softshoe layoffs. Once your exit strategy is deployed your eyes can avoid pain of reading that barbage or hearing it on corporate calls. It’s mindnumbing what persists in F500 corporate America.
read the great anthropologist book, called, “bullshit jobs, a theory”. a serious book. the more bullshit, the more money. we are an empire of nihilist bullshit. glad i figured it out as a young man and pulled the rip cord. the lifestyle in amerika is so easy and plush whether you have huge salary or make a few shekels selling tacos. i’d rather own the taco stand. i did much better, after tax, with fraction of the hours spent doing bullshit than any corporate dude i know. my best pal rose to CEO of 3000 people financial company. chairman of board, too. miserable life. he’s not really human. robotic. what i did was buying old busted up houses and restoring them and renting them, nice long naps every afternoon for the past 35 years. trading stocks for 45 years. was a stock broker for a few short years and started my own hedge fund. family and friends. easy peasy. trading is easy. i have an affinity for success in it. good luck in life. it ain’t no dress rehearsal. a day spent doing something you abhor is painful. in rich world, unneccessary
But it was nice for that “Vice-President of People Experience” lady to SHARE that she was firing your ass….
Sharing is caring…😄
i agree with lots of your takes. i disagree about demographic crash. i also cannot imagine a lifetime of working for those big companies. sounds soul crushing. in the 80s i was a techie doing gerrymandering using NSA and MIC grade cad cam systems and demographic data. for a task force, for NYS legislature. we had lots of demographers in office. they never know. there is little thing called immigration. easy example. nyc, my hometown on and off for over half my 65 years. it has never had a higher percentage of immigrants including the early 1900s. canada and australia have twice the immigrants percentage wise as usa. alan greenspan him self said in the 1990s. if the system is broke for SS……open up the floodgates of young educated and hard working immigrants. we are going through this idiotic spell of running off maids and busboys. won’t last long. when shit gets bad, we will let in tens of millions of folks from all 4 corners of globe. i still wish you luck on exit. that is very smart. and sounds exciting. and fun. we learn when travelling. you can always come back if and when shit looks better, here. or not.
As of June 2024, 31.5% of Australians were born overseas – mostly coming from England.
We are placing our trust and faith in Robots, who devour our resources, and only do what they are programmed to do, hopefully. Humans can’t replace what the programmed robots can do, so what does happen when they are hacked or worse? How about hacked and for nefarious reasons, but will that get interesting fast! Do they have h robots who are programmed to harm yet? By name and facial recognition perhaps? If not, that’s coming too, and talk about nefarious…
Amazon employs about 1 Million and is cutting 17,000 employees which is just a 2% staff reduction. But Amazon also announced they will soon open over 100 new Amazon owned Whole Food Stores. Obviously people should now try to get skills in areas that A.I. will hopefully have less impact.
Every month there will be 1,000 human layoffs and replaced by new Robotic Hires till Amazon will be GAI controlled and run
Definitely a sign of a slowing economy; also Amazon has been pumping cash into its AI efforts, so they are cost-cutting where they can.
I don’t however buy that the job losses are to do with AI automating the jobs. I think companies use this as an excuse to cut jobs whilst also boostering their AI credentials.
I see the dollar has bounced as well after Bessent’s comments.
The question I have is what will happen if markets start to slide, esp because of AI bubble. Will the money go into PMs? Or will there be a dash for cash and a spike in the dollar?
Given there is a lot of leverage in the system – some of which is now in PMs – I think it more likely to be the latter.
In other news Mr Son has just pumped more money into ChatGPT so time to get the lifeboats ready.
I talk to a lot of people trying other use it in tech, and the general consensus is “seems useful, but it lies 20% of the time, so I dunno…”
Does their workforce count 1099s?
No doubt, taco will be touting the “strong economy” as indicated by the increase in layoffs and less hiring. Perhaps, he will add some more tariffs to keep the economy going.
Job losses are never fun for the person who has them and for them, it’s a depression. There are signs of the hurting consumer everywhere. Trump praises the ATH in the stock markets while people have suffered under immense cost of living burdens. This is great for stockholders, terrible for everyone else.
I can’t change what is happening to the economy but I sure as anything want to do whatever helps me through it. Asset ownership is the way. Whatever is happening with the economy, I’ve made an absolute fortune with my Barrick Gold investment that I made like 3 years ago. Did nothing for two years, even lost a small bit.
Now I am seriously regretting not buying more. It’s my best performer, ever. I have no idea if this is a blow off top or not.
I have a harder time knowing when to sell a stock than when to buy. I’ve quadrupled my investment, but I have no idea if the end is near or if there’s a way to go.
You’ve got a real “first world problem” on your hands with your four baggers
Yes, it’s not a problem compared to what most people deal with.
I’d prefer to solve the problems facing the USA in a different way than they are being solved. Printing money at rates the USA is currently printing has always ended in tears before and this time will be no exception.
Hard assets retain their value, even as the economy goes off a cliff. I highly recommend people keep a percentage of their investments in hard assets like real estate and PM’s.
And to those without assets, the way to get them is through living below your means, whatever that takes.
The stock market isn’t really at ATH, at least when priced in nominal terms like against gold, it is down 45% due to the devaluation of the currency.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu0WCnddY5I
A diversified set of “monetary” instruments is what is needed now to slow the bleeding (gold, silver, yen, euro, bitcoin). Regular readers here know that I was not a big fan of pm but that’s now changed. Mea culpa submitted.
Five years to go in the gold bull market…
‘Senior Vice President of People Experience’
We’ve got a similar creature where I work… sends out happy clappy newsletters, and reads an ai generated blurb about the employee of the month at the monthly meeting.
Most of her face doesn’t move. I think she may be a robot.
LOL – I laughed when I saw that, too.
I see that jobs are now called “roles”.
She’s “roleplaying” as “someone who cares.”
And we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us!
Jobs = Work but Rolls = Whatever you want it to be! When you have a Job, it MUST get done, but when you have a role, you simply play along with others, until it gets done. That depends of course, on how hard the role players wish to complete there piece, or if they even do. In a roll, you can stretch it out for days or years, it’s all up to you. In a Job YOU have a deadline that must be met!
Wokeism is still ingrained in corporate America.
You just can’t resist an opportunity to spout your stupid bullshit, can you?
And you just can’t resist the freedumb to post about everything and anything, most of which you have no clue what you speaking of.