The actual announcement
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/ceo-andy-jassy...
An equally important update was reducing number of managers which nobody seems to care about :-)
So, we’re asking each s-team organization to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% by the end of Q1 2025.I honestly wonder how useful most managers are..
Just anecdotal ofc but over my career having worked for 14 managers.
Half of them were eventually fired.
Most of them sucked at rallying teams, mainly because who the f is going to follow a doofus cringe lord?
2 managers stand out to me in my career. I’m really good friends with one of them that I’ve been in contact with for over a decade now.
Most were basically checkbox checkers who sucked at engineering and faked their way into “people management” only to be found out that they just plain suck as employees. I actually checked LinkedIn just now of a few of those bad ones and they work at small companies and have made no upward progress. Not surprised honestly.
Keep in mind I worked at a pretty good place, not a noob tier place.
Strategic of them to include the 5-day a week to hide the 15% managerial layoffs. 1 in 8 managers need to be converted into ICs. The average manager has around 8 ICs with the "two-pizza team" ideal, so that means 2% overall layoffs. Not huge, but managers generally cost more than ICs, so there's likely outsized salary impact. Organizational changes will surely reduce productivity as everyone gets shuffled too.