Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly

Validity of the story

• Several commenters say the article is misleading or outright wrong.
• It appears to be recycled from an older Business Insider piece based on a Morgan Stanley analyst memo interpreting Amazon’s plan to change the IC:manager ratio.
• People familiar with Amazon say the real 2024 change mostly involved reorgs and moves from manager → IC, not 14k manager layoffs.
• A linked Fast Company piece is cited stating the “14,000 managers laid off” story is bogus and the $3.5B figure is analyst speculation, not an announced target.

Scale and numbers

• Amazon has ~1.5M employees; 14k would be <1% of total staff but ~13% of managers, so non‑trivial within that layer.
• Back‑of‑the‑envelope math (3.5B / 14k) yields ~$250k per manager in annual cost, which some see as low for tech managers but high if it includes global, non‑tech management.

Role and value of managers

• Strong anti‑manager sentiment: many describe middle/upper managers as “status brokers,” political operators, or “human ticket classifiers” who add bureaucracy and block progress.
• Others argue good managers are essential: shielding teams from chaos, handling politics, mentoring, hiring, and coordinating unsexy work. Several say they’ve only stayed or left jobs because of managers.
• Multiple people note that bad managers have a far larger “blast radius” than bad engineers.

Amazon’s culture and incentives

• Commenters blame Amazon’s internal processes, competitiveness, and performance‑improvement culture more than individual managers.
• Managers are seen as optimizing for upward perception and survival through reorgs, not necessarily team or company value.
• Some argue middle management is the effective culture employees experience; others say real power sits several layers above those being cut.

Layoffs, politics, and selection

• Debate over whether layoffs “cull the worst” or just those least politically protected; many note the most political managers are best positioned to survive.
• Some frame the move as shareholder‑value theater and cost-trimming amid macro headwinds, not genuine efficiency reform.
• There’s concern that fewer managers means overloaded remaining ones and less support for career development and compensation discussions.

AI and automation of management

• Several speculate AI will increasingly replace routine management tasks: ticket triage, performance metrics, documentation for HR, even scripted PIPs.
• This is seen as a coming “corporate dystopia,” where automated oversight and firing lack human empathy, while high‑level power structures remain intact.