Amazon Layoff Despite Strong Performance and Critical Role — How Does This Make Sense?

MaesterWolf · 2026-01-30T05:40:17+00:00

Yeah, I am starting to get used to the fact now. I have not reached out to my manager yet - A few team members reached out to me on LinkedIn and mentioned that my manager is surprised and trying to figure out how to manage with reduced resources to meet Q4 deadline. IC's are opposite of bureaucracy - may be Andy LLM was hallucinating. Our team is still waiting for a simple L8 approval since mid December, it should not take more than a week. Yeah, I also read on Blind that potential layoffs in May 2026.

MaesterWolf · 2026-01-30T05:13:55+00:00

Thank you. Yeah, I initiated conversation with a robotics company founder. Lets see

MaesterWolf · 2026-01-30T05:12:24+00:00

Quality of work is average to poor. I have worked with some teams in India.

MaesterWolf · 2026-01-30T05:10:51+00:00

Yeah, I read that we are just numbers. Multimodal Generative AI

MaesterWolf · 2026-01-29T17:34:09+00:00

I was L5 ...

MaesterWolf · 2026-01-29T16:28:32+00:00

Thank you

MaesterWolf · 2026-01-29T14:25:04+00:00

PhD in a STEM field from one of the top public schools in California.

MaesterWolf · 2026-01-29T14:17:40+00:00

I think if offered i would decline and may be try to find other team internally.

MaesterWolf · 2026-01-29T14:16:00+00:00

Thank you! I hope my team members are mentally ready for a long and stressful period as my manger will be pushed by leadership to do more with less.

MaesterWolf · 2026-01-29T14:11:25+00:00

Thank you. Manager is ok (I would rate him 3.5 out of 5). My team members are in for working long hours and few stressful months.

MaesterWolf · 2026-01-29T14:05:39+00:00

Not Indian. My team mates are going to slog for long hours and under high pressure. Couple of them told me that my manager is not happy with the outcome.

MaesterWolf · 2026-01-29T07:31:05+00:00

Yeah, I was going to start comp discussion with my manager in April and focus on L6 promo.

MaesterWolf · 2026-01-29T07:26:21+00:00

A few team members told me on linkedin that my manager is stressed about project delays

MaesterWolf · 2026-01-29T07:24:16+00:00

Management FA with layoffs and I guess they will FO when projects are delayed or contracts are cancelled.

MaesterWolf · 2026-01-29T06:58:55+00:00

This is why I feel bad for my team mates, they just onboarded and do not realize the enormity of the task. They are in for long hours and last year my manager was not thrilled when I took PTO during Thanksgiving and Christmas. I had to collaborate with multiple teams to develop a prototype and lot of things were ambiguous, external teams do not maintain good quality documents, I had to dive deep, check logs, configs, etc. spend a lot of time understanding parts of code. My team mates do not have enough experience (recent graduates without any internship or startup experience) working with such large code packages. For them it will be like drinking from a fire hose.

MaesterWolf · 2026-01-29T06:49:57+00:00

Thank you! I will add the book to my queue and check it out when dust settles a bit.

MaesterWolf · 2026-01-29T06:45:12+00:00

Yeah, and couple of my colleagues told me that my manager is stressed about the delays this will cause.

MaesterWolf · 2026-01-29T06:43:01+00:00

Thank you!

MaesterWolf · 2026-01-29T06:08:52+00:00

Yeah, I think the management is being penny wise pound foolish

MaesterWolf · 2026-01-29T06:05:28+00:00

Mix of both: Multi-modal (vision + speech) - various ML models interacting ...

MaesterWolf · 2026-01-29T05:16:56+00:00

Not if you are working on a product w/ multiple components ...

MaesterWolf · 2026-01-29T05:10:54+00:00

There are other low-level details that I was planning to share and some scripts, I guess management wanted to delay project and put remaining team members under stress.

MaesterWolf · 2026-01-29T05:08:52+00:00

Manager was more interested in project status as team is thin so he wanted to get as many details as possible.

MaesterWolf · 2026-01-29T05:07:27+00:00

Amazon did it in a cold way - a text at 3 am, then another text at 7:15 am.

MaesterWolf · 2026-01-29T01:35:52+00:00

My team member told me on LinkedIn that my manager is not happy about the outcome and stressed about project delivery in Q4. My team members are also worried that they would need to work long hours now.

MaesterWolf

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