Eben Brown and JT discuss corporate job cuts at Amazon

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Evan Brown joined us not to talk about some of
the layoffs are taking place now, just learning the target
is about ready to get rid of eighteen hundred of
their corporate job positions. Amazon thirty thousand plus, they're going
to be cutting about ten percent of their workforce in
the corporate world. There, Evan, I had no idea that Amazon.
I know they're big, but with one point five million
total employees, three hundred and fifty thousand of those folks

(00:21):
are corporate employees, So ten percent, that's still a nice chunk.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Though it is a big chunk. And the question is
what does a corporate employee mean. I think people get
the impression that means someone in a suit sitting at
a desk at a cubicle somewhere, and it may mean that,
but it may also just simply mean that they work
directly for Amazon. They're not contractors, and so not quite
sure exactly how that plays out. But to hear that

(00:47):
thirty thousand people could lose their job is a lot. Now.
Posting from one of the Amazon vice presidents put the number,
I think closer to fourteen thousand, which would be you know,
like half, but still that's still a lot of workers, right,
I mean, so, however this plays out, is still it's
still not the thing you want to hear. Now, why

(01:08):
are they doing this? A lot of this seems to
be about right siding the company. With the advent of
ai AI being able to take on a lot of
administrative tasks, there isn't a need for as many people
they're also was and I don't think this is addressed
by the company itself, but there's been a lot of
talk that Amazon had been a little overstaffed in the

(01:30):
age of COVID and beyond because they took on extra
people to make up for the people that weren't coming
into work but who still kept their jobs. Right, So
that this may be a way of simply right siding
things as well. But at the same time, what do
you do for these you know, thousands of employees who
might find themselves jobless here. They've been told there'll be

(01:53):
a ninety day notice in which they're allowed to try
to apply for jobs elsewhere in the company and stay
on with the company. But I'll swear that that after
ninety days they'll be given a severance, which probably has
something to do with how long of service they have
with the company. But getting a ninety day notice is

(02:15):
pretty nice, and getting what would probably be pretty significant
severance is also pretty nice. Not every industry does that.
In some cases, you're given two weeks and you're out,
and that's how much you can do about it.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Well, normally this time of the year you see an
influx of people hiring seasonal workers to come on to
take care of the rush in the holidays. The timing
of this is bad on both sides. It seems to
me that you know, Amazon's going to be extremely busy
between now and the end of the year with the holidays,
but also, you know, most companies do adjust their budgets

(02:49):
towards the end of the year to get ready for
fiscal twenty twenty six, And what are they going to
tell these corporate employees. Look, it's not going to work
out in this building, but hey, we need some people
at the warehouse. If you want to drive, you know
you're going to go make it from a home.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
That might be something. If you want to stay employed,
you might avail yourself for that. But at the same time,
you know, if you're getting ninety days notice, that's what
we're just about here. At the start of November, so
what does that bring you to January into January ninety days? Yeah,
I mean it's getting through the holidays, that's for sure.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
And two weeks.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
It beats two weeks and an unceremonious you know, here's
a box to clear out your desk, and we'll walk
you out of the building to make sure you know,
because we don't trust you. All of a sudden, you
know that that's a that's a different dynamic. So that's
it's no fun. But at the same time, you know,
this is part of this is technology coming of age

(03:44):
and they're realizing that they don't need as many people
to do the kind of work that's being done because
technology can now do it. And that's a paradigm that
repeats itself, you know all the time. I mean, we've
we've had we've had this before where technology provides a
jump in workplace efficiency through non human means, and it
means workforce gets impacted and people have to find different

(04:05):
kinds of jobs because those jobs don't exist anymore. For instance,
here in the broadcast world, we no longer need three
people to run a tape machine, in which the union
delineated one person load the tape. One person play and
stop the tape. A third person unload the tape.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
Well, you're dating yourself talking tapes there when everything's digital
like it is today, Evan. But you're right. AI is
certainly changing the structure of the way we're doing business
in every field out there, so I guess, and we're
hearing more and more about it. If you're not up
to speed on your AI skills, you have better get going,
and sooner the better. Evan Brown, thank you so much

(04:41):
for the update, Buddy. I appreciate it.