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Seankps t1_jcyibvr wrote

Important to remember, like Google and Meta, they were over hiring. As a software engineer, I was getting a couple of calls a week from Amazon recruiters. Even though I had recently interviewed and wasn’t allowed to interview again for six months. They didn’t care, they didn’t check, they were hiring for whatever.

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Fenix42 t1_jcyswhs wrote

I am in a lower population area of California that has an Amazon office. It's small. Less than 100 people. I know a big chunk of the people there. I was getting pinged on Linkedin to interview every few weeks for a while. It stopped about 6 months ago.

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enjoytheshow t1_jcz44ni wrote

Hiring freeze started in October IIRC

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Fenix42 t1_jd0kxmd wrote

Souunds about right. I was laid off in June of 2021. Started the current job that Sept. I did the initial screening stuff with them when I got the offer for my current job. I was getting pinged by them like 1x a month until about October.

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Dredly t1_jd126yy wrote

Bingo - Hiring through the pandemic was seen as a sign of brand health and confidence by investors, as soon as it "ended" they immediately went "wait, our earnings per share went down, What!?!?!?" and thus mass layoffs

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kariam_24 t1_jd26qx6 wrote

Right, people are fearmongering, ingoring numbers, for example Microsoft which laid off 10k people while recruiting 40k positions during pandemic.

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hoodyninja t1_jd14hwy wrote

Exactly. Always more to the story than the headline. A couple of years ago they were around 900k employees and are now around 1.6MILLION employees. Yes with this additional 9,000 they are around 35,000 layoffs…. That’s not a lot.

If any other company was like, “hey everyone over the past 2-3 years we doubled our staff and over-hired a bit… and are correcting this year. Unfortunately we are going to lay off 2% of the staff (again we doubled our staff and have to reduce by 2% now).” it likely wouldn’t make headlines.

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TomPrince t1_jd18v2c wrote

This is a great point. Amazon should quantify their layoffs as a percentage.

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hoodyninja t1_jd197i0 wrote

Hahaha right?

I don’t know for sure but I imagine they do to their shareholders but a headline of “Amazon doubles workforce in 2 years and then corrects by 2%” doesn’t sound like it’s gonna get clicks

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DevAway22314 t1_jd4bzcl wrote

The vast majority of those employees are warehouse and delivery roles

It's useless to lump them in with the corporate and tech roles, which is where all the layoffs are

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HarleyNBarley t1_jd19c6b wrote

Can you tel me a little more around how not being allowed to interview for 6 months works? Like they flag you if the interview doesn’t go very well? Unfit for one doesn’t mean the same for a different role and team so curious how that would work?

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Seankps t1_jd2oa7u wrote

If you don’t do very well in the coding test, they don’t let you just try again tomorrow, or next week. You have to wait six months.

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clev1 t1_jd373hm wrote

I experienced the same exact thing with them. It was absolutely crazy. We had a few people leave our company for Amazon. Looking back at it, I bombed the first interview and I’m kind of glad I did because it would have landed me on their Luna team which I’m almost certain is on the chopping block.

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