by lamont » Wed Jun 24, 2009 8:49 am
Amazon does that during good times and bad.
They aggressively topgrade employees and try to let go 5-10% every year, layoffs usually occur a little earlier in the year, however, after the performance review cycle that starts in Feb or so.
Amazon also does like to shitcan entire groups of employees as a management tactic to cause work to get pushed around and either bleed certain things dry, or else cause other groups to step up. They'll do 50% of the work of moving the work off a group and then either fire all the employees or else tell them to find jobs elsewhere in the business in order to create a "forcing factor" to get the other 50% of the work done.
It is kind of unlikely that this is a sign of the economy or of how Amazon is doing.