this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024

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Amazon Layoffs: Tech Firm To Cut 14,000 Manager Positions By 2025, Says Report (news.abplive.com)

submitted 20 hours ago by ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net to c/technology@lemmy.world

35 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

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[–] dugmeup@lemmy.world 93 points 19 hours ago (3 children)

Middle management is brutal. No one gives a shit and you have very little power.

[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 25 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Middle Manglement. Don't forget they have to put their stink on everything to differentiate themselves.

It's one of the main reasons ideas that do actually work at a c-suite level end up being implemented terribly in the end.

[–] pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online 10 points 14 hours ago

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.

[–] WaxiestSteam69@lemmy.world 4 points 18 hours ago

Ageeed I'll never do it again.

[+] queermunist@lemmy.ml -17 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (2 children)

Middle management deserves everything it gets.

[–] LillyPip@lemmy.ca 55 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (3 children)

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.

(No, I’m not a middle-manager.)

[–] Jrockwar@feddit.uk 15 points 19 hours ago

I think my job is technically a middle manager at this point?

The reality is that the priorities come straight from the top, people in my team are mostly self-organised unless the tasks they choose were to be wildly misaligned with company milestones (which in practice never happens) or people have questions about what needs tackling first or when by, and I'm mostly a technical unblocker that jumps into the hardest or slowest moving technical challenges.

My point to all of this - "middle manager" is a wildly different concept in every company. Nobody likes a pen pusher with no knowledge, but also no company hires people into the title of "middle manager" hoping they'll boss people around cluelessly. If that happens and that role exists, something has gone clearly wrong IMO.

[+] queermunist@lemmy.ml -7 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

They're fucking climbers. Every middle manager takes the job because they want to be upper management someday. Zero sympathy.

[–] Benjaben@lemmy.world 6 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I'm gonna make what I consider to be an important distinction here, but I also want to say I mostly agree with you and I'm bummed by the downvotes.

I think we can lump the middle manager into two broad "types". And you seem to be exclusively describing one of the two types - the one that's, frankly, smart and "aware" enough to realize that middle management is trash, rank and file is trash, and they know precisely why they are aiming to get above everyone. It ain't cuz they want to help, of course, and they never intend to. Fuck those people every possible way, because not only do they understand that the purpose of middle management is to be the buffer between the owners and the laborers, they also have decided - with full awareness! - fuck the laborers, I want to be good with the owners.

But there's another, sadder kind of middle manager, and I think maybe your hostility is unkind and unfair to this type. This middle manager still has the wool pulled over their eyes, they really think if they work hard and do well, they'll be rewarded! And hey, isn't the fact that they've been promoted (!) to leadership a clear indicator that they're doing things right? Just gotta keep at it, the really important people keep telling me this is what they like to see, I'll finally be able to get all these bills paid / improve my life! I'm on the way up, finally.

And then that person says "YEESH managing this store is really hard, I've gotta get better at this. My leadership doesn't seem to think this should be a struggle..."

Etc., etc., for 10, 20 years as the wool gradually falls from their eyes. Not everyone is able to see things as clearly as you are. Most middle managers, I think, are basically suckers. Naive and exploited. The rest, tho, are basically monsters without enough power to be monsters. No argument there, and fuck those people.

[–] pdxfed@lemmy.world 2 points 59 minutes ago* (last edited 58 minutes ago)

3rd type- sees Real wages falling each year, has college debt or car debt or credit card debt or had to buy a new furnace on an installment plan or God forbid wants to take a vacation or or or

Anyway, this person has to try keep climbing or they will lose their car/ be kicked out of their apartment, nothing in society will support them as they "failed at their job and/or must be lazy", etc.

There truly are some doofuses at every level of organization, the closer to the top people more often are playing the cruel game to win, but middle management are hardly the game theory types--they wouldn't have accepted their job if they were that strategic as there is no winning.

So depressing to see working class folks going after other working class folks(someone with supervisor or manager or director in their title) because they "have it better"...the latter almost exclusively are trapped in a different fucked up system.

[–] chakan2@lemmy.world -2 points 17 hours ago

If you take a job shoveling shit, am I supposed to feel bad for you when you shovel shit?

[–] heavy@sh.itjust.works 10 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[+] queermunist@lemmy.ml -18 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

I'm pretty fucking sure you still have to apply to become a middle manager. You don't just evolve like a Pokemon.

They voluntarily became the manager's gofers because they're disgusting climbers and they get what they deserve. 🙂

[–] heavy@sh.itjust.works 14 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I'm pretty fucking sure it doesn't work like that outside of your black and white interpretation.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I'm saying a lot of people find themselves in that (bad) situation either outside their control, or they can be manipulated, coerced, pressured, or hell use your imagination.

To be clear, it's definitely not always "oh so-and-so was so obsessed with climbing the ladder that they became the bosses bitch, Oooo." Thats a kindergarden take and, IMO, helps empower people at the top hoarding all the wealth.

[+] queermunist@lemmy.ml -12 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Managers at every level exist to protect the boss's wealth and extract the surplus value we create with our labor. They're slave drivers for the wage slaves.

News flash: managers at every level also think of themselves as victims and they always pass that on down the chain of command. Upper management gets screamed at by senior management, then they scream at middle management, and then the people on the ground get screamed at. Shit rolls down hill. They aren't always looking to get promoted all the way to the top, but every single one of them wants to be promoted higher than the rest of us so they can get a little more of the surplus value we generate.

If their job as middle management is so fucking hard how about they give it up? Accept a demotion and rejoin us on the floor. No one has to be middle management.

[–] simplejack@lemmy.world 6 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

A lot of us here work in software. Often times there are two tracks, IC and people management. Often times both of those tracks pay similarly.

The good people managers and directors are usually folk that were identified as being good at mentoring people and good at providing air cover so people could do good work.

I’m sorry you’ve never worked at a place with good middle management. It does exist in many places, and many people selected it because they like working with the people and the strategy more than the product directly. Often times these people could’ve been paid comparably by working as a staff or principal track engineer or experience designer.

[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I feel like all of your knowledge about “middle management” is derived from The Office.

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 minutes ago

I work for a living honey. My knowledge is derived from dealing with them.

[–] Baguette@lemm.ee 34 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] The_v@lemmy.world 48 points 16 hours ago

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.

[–] ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net 1 points 13 hours ago

It worked to bring balance to The Force.

[–] ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net 39 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Good.

I worked at a job where there would be 4 managers, all "managing" one or two developers to get a task done.

[–] meco03211@lemmy.world 31 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

Did you get that memo?

[–] AbidanYre@lemmy.world 12 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

We saw that you've been missing a lot of work.

[–] picandocodigo@lemmy.world 12 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

I wouldn't say I've been missing it, Bob!

[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 8 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

What is it, would you say… that… you do here?

[–] jaybone@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago

I HAVE PEOPLE SKILLS. I AM GOOD AT DEALING WITH PEOPLE. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?

[–] mp3@lemmy.ca 19 points 19 hours ago

It's because they realized the employees are more productive while remote working, so they'll reinstate it.. right?

[–] sramder@lemmy.world 22 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

Hopefully a few thousand of them were the ones responsible for making the website dog shit 😅

[–] PlantJam@lemmy.world 13 points 18 hours ago

It looks like you want an AI summary of what users thought about your comment, is that right? Here you go!

[–] Tikiporch@lemmy.world 2 points 15 hours ago

Can I just say, fuck Rufus popping up after every search.

[–] ownsauce@lemmy.world 9 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] yeahiknow3@lemmings.world 6 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Tragic.

[–] Sidyctism2@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 16 hours ago

shakes head somberly

a surprise to be sure, but an unfortunate one

[–] sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz 0 points 17 hours ago

This comment section gives me hope for this platform.