February 13, 2023

📉  Why My Amazon Job Got Eliminated?


Recently I (and my team) lost our jobs at Amazon, although Amazon phrases it as “our jobs were eliminated” — I am not entirely sure which sounds worse. I 10/10 loved my time at Amazon and was hoping for a long-career there but here we are. Now that it’s been a few weeks, here has been my strategy:

  1. reflect
  2. articulate what I want to do next
  3. update portfolio
  4. write
  5. grab coffee with former colleagues I enjoy

I often get asked, “so what exactly happened?” This is my attempt to put pen to paper and describe the underlying root causes of losing my job. For context, I worked on Amazon Pickup & Returns, an alternative to home delivery, with 20 million customers in 20 segments around the globe. 


REASON #1
 Macroeconomics
You drop the macroeconomics word in there and most people “get it” or get confused. Truth is it would take pages to explain this picture. Like explaining to a 5 year old — when the economy is bad companies spend less — and the easiest way to spend less is not pay employees. This comes at a price, where companies leave growth mode and hibernate for the winter. The winter forces companies to think about which parts of the business are performing well (making money) and which parts of the business aren’t performing well (not making money). Companies need to spend less and make more — so their shareholders make more.

Now, do these companies already make a $%&% ton of money — yes. But they do need to proactively take action before the balance sheet threatens the health of the entire company — yes. This is just good business, even in my personal finances, I want to spend less and make more.

Design is often oblivious to the financial state of the business. Design often works in the speculative land of what-if, without necessarily knowing if they are an advantage or cost to the business. Smart companies however don’t just cut salaries arbitrarily. They like to restructure their business and org to reflect the future state, while cutting salaries at the same time. Moments like the anticipated recession, offer companies a moment in time to say: what do we want to be when we grow up? what do we need to change? From a business standpoint even though I lost my job — I get it. 

Other macroeconomic issues:
  • Global economists predict a recession in ‘22 —  people buying fewer things. Even if a recession doesn’t happen, the lay-offs are an insurance policy in case it does.
  • Tech companies (like Amazon) made a lot of money in the pandemic but are seeing there balance sheets come back to life: ‘21 $+33.364B, whereas in ‘22 $-2.722B. Yikes — big swing. Could Amazon have planned for this better? — yes. Is planning for this entirely out of there control? — also yes. 

REASON #2
Duplicative Design Efforts Across the Company

Looking around the company, I saw 3-4 other teams doing really similar work to Amazon Pickup. Whole Foods Fresh delivery, Enterprise checkout team, Buy On-Line Pick-up in Store team, and probably others. From a job risk stand point this is not good when your team doesn’t have a unique charter. Anytime your team becomes a bottleneck for other teams doing similar work — you leave the door to becoming expendable. 

REASON #3
Know Who Writes Your Design Check
Yikes, this might be the most important take-away. The team I thought was writing my check wasn’t the person actually writing my check. If they aren’t happy with the vision, goals or work of your team you invite risk into your job.

REASON #4
Balance Execution and Vision Work
Sure, research is wonderful. But when do you do it? How much is too much? What if the problem has already been framing with 90% certainty? Research can bring the company 10x, but used improperly is a cost and time suck. Design has to be good about describing what projects have risk without doing research and which ones are “good enough” without it. Much like life I don’t have an unlimited amount of time, money or resources — balance is key. I think our team could have done a better job with balancing near-term and long-term work.

REASON #5
Not Enough ‘Runway’ to Do Strategic Design
Much like a start-up there is only so much money to go around. From my experience, UX design teams historically don’t do a good enough job of providing short-term value and long-term vision. But much like a start-up if you don’t bring the business money, why are you here? You have to ask yourself, do our partners understand strategic design? If not, you have your hands full and you risk the ability to do speculative, vision work. We thought we had months to do design “right” and ultimately ran out of time. 

REASON #6
Not Proving Clear and Obvious Value for the Business
Companies still don’t know what to “do” with a UX team. They know they can deliver more than just the pixel but they haven’t figured out how that fits into the business routines. Sure some companies have figured this out, but by and large UX is in college still, 20-25 years old, and if any of the issues listed above are happening you invite job risk.


SO, WHAT IS THE LESSON IN ALL THIS?
I think 80% of this reason why we got let go was due to macroeconomic and teams doing duplicative work across the company. But there was still elements under our control. My learnings are as follows:

  • Understand the bigger economic picture globally, across the enterprise and within your line of business before taking a job. I just assumed it was all healthy before taking the job.
  • When interviewing ask “what other teams are doing similar work and how are we different”. This demonstrates that you have a systems thinking perspective and how your team will be uniquely positioned to carry out it’s charter.
  • Know who writes your check. I made this fatal mistake at Amazon by not knowing who was my primary stakeholder.
  • Know how informed your organization is on design execution vs design strategy. This determines how you approach integrating both into your work — ultimately you need to balance the near and the far-term.

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