Posted on 02/12/2018 9:36:13 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Amazon is laying off hundreds of corporate employees, a rare cutback for a company that has spent most of the last few years in a frantic growth spurt.
The layoffs, underway now, will fall on several hundred employees at the online retailers Seattle headquarters, along with hundreds more elsewhere in Amazons global operations, one person familiar with the cuts said. The layoffs are primarily focused on Amazons consumer retail businesses, according to two people familiar with the matter.
A few hundred layoffs are modest for a company that is now the second-largest U.S.-based corporate employer, and pales in comparison to adjustments in recent years that saw Microsoft and Boeing eliminate thousands of jobs in a single cutting drive.
But at Amazon, a company with a wide range of growing businesses that prides itself on frugality and efficient allocation of resources, broad layoffs of any kind are rare.
The cuts come after a hiring binge that took the companys Seattle head count to more than 40,000 people, from just 5,000 in 2010.
According to several employees, the rapid growth of the last two years left some units over budget and some teams with too much staff for their work. Amazon had implemented hiring freezes in recent months across several groups, a move that reduced the companys open job listings in Seattle to their lowest level in years.
In a statement, Amazon acknowledged the cuts.
As part of our annual planning process, we are making head count adjustments across the company small reductions in a couple of places and aggressive hiring in many others, a spokesman said. For affected employees, we work to find roles in the areas where we are hiring.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.com ...
If you buy existing companies you deal with two problems:
FTC approval
Existing union contracts
Starting a new company from scratch avoids both.
I’m sure they have CPAs. They bought over a company a month last year, that’s bound to give you extra people.
Gotta give it to him though. Building value by enabling poor planning, lousy scheduling, time to produce inefficiencies, and capitalizing off of such bad habits sure has given him a good long run.
At what cost?
FTC has no legitimate objection to a non-transport company buying into the market.
It is NOT consolidation.
Union contracts can be renegotiated with new owners.
Horizontal expansion is one the FTC gets involved in more and more. In the end they usually approve but the months of whining and hearings can be expensive.
Union contracts can be renegotiated but you’re better off not having them at all. Pissing contests with unions are only avoidable by not having unions.
They are going to integrate all if their supply chains with such services. Food. Retail delivery etc. All under one roof
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.