So people should be screwed out of their severance? Just lay people off, you hired them be an adult and fire them.

That's the whole point.

Why fire people and pay them severance when you can get them to quit instead?

Of course, you're going to lose the people with talent who can find other jobs - and retain the ones who can't.

But seems like a trade they are eager to make.

Yeah, the problem is the people most willing to just leave are the ones that can get something else reasonably fast (which end up being your better employees).

AWS has been in decline in terms of quality for years now. They aren't innovating well and even higher turnover will only make things worse. Notice how Amazon is really far behind in LLMs despite having so many research scientists on staff.

They are well versed at meat grinder operations.

Why even lay off with mutual agreements paying severance? Just fire people and deal with the consequences.

> Why even lay off with mutual agreements paying severance?

PR

> Just fire people and deal with the consequences.

Or why not reduce headcount and not deal with the consequences? That's what they're trying to do.

Everyone has been bitter of tech workers for the better part of a decade. You're not going to lose points with the public for treating tech workers like normal workers.

Why deal with the consequences when they don’t have to?

One thing I learned in adulthood is that smart (not necessarily ethical) people steal credit when things are good and avoid responsibility for anything unpopular as there is no payoff for it.

They are on the hook for paying severance, unemployment insurance and such. If the employee is the one who “quit” well it’s “their choice”…

Yes but then that would mean less money for the company and the investors, so you see the difficulty that poses. /s

Or if there's some other ulterior motive like promises to local government

I think its a combination of over hiring over the pandemic, higher interest rates and an opportunity to reduce salaries for future hires.

Reduced salaries for future tech workers is going to be a double whammy because I doubt tech stocks are going to continue growing like they did in the past decade.

It really boosts your income when your equity doubles or triples in value during the vesting period.

I don't think that makes sense. You can just go back and not work. Learn a new skill or something while in the office. You basically fire people who physically can't come back or people who are not afraid of losing their job. You probably don't want to fire based on that.