The ‘L’ Word

Trust and hope. These two words sum up pretty much everything lacking in the world right now. With rising inflation and layoffs among all the major tech companies — Stripe, Lyft, Meta and now Amazon, the world seems very bleak at the moment. Especially, for me, a Software Engineer at Amazon. This is not a rant on how corporate culture is bad at Amazon or how top shot executives mint money while the rest of us suffer in silence. Rather, think of this post as the internal dogma inside the mind of a 21 year old trying to piece together everything that is happening around him and hopefully, provide his 2-cents out of it. So let’s start shall we?

Like any coin, there’s always 2 sides, so let’s begin from the employee side. But, before I begin, let me first convey my heartfelt sympathy for all of those out there who have been affected by layoffs, especially those who are on a visa timeline. I know it’s tough, but we’ll get through this. Trust me… Now, coming back to the employee side of things. I understand the pressure and tension that goes inside our heads. Cracking and getting a job as a software engineer in a tech company (I’ll avoid the term FAANG here) is tough. It takes months — if not years if you’re still in college — of preparation to get in. Grinding through leetcode — reversing a linkedlist, inverting a binary tree, finding the letters in an alien dictionary … well you know the drill — takes deliberate will and effort. And on top of this, being part of a 4 hour or 6 hour long onsite interview takes endurance. And despite all of this, hearing and seeing that you may soon have to repeat the process is tiring to say the least. What if I don’t get a job in big tech anymore? What if society considers me a failure? Was everything in vain? If this is what hardwork gets you, then what’s the point of working anyway? How are we any different than the same computers who run our code? Well, these are some of the questions running through my head right now and some of you may be thinking along the same lines. But, the reasonable thing to do here is to pause and reflect.

See the reflection of yourself — I don’t mean your body or your mind, but rather take a look at your life at the moment and zoom out. In the grand scheme of things, is this layoff or this job at a very so-called prestigious company really going to make a difference in the impact that you are going to drive in this world? The answer is a flat NO. Think of this as an opportunity to grow as an individual. At least that’s how I am viewing it. The fact that I am publishing a medium article, which by the way, is something that I’ve wanted to do for ages is a move to a better version of myself.

Do whatever makes you happy because that’s what will keep you satisfied and as well as move the economy forward for the rest of us. In a complete free market — which is where the U.S. economy is heading toward — the best way to contribute is to be yourself because that’s the only thing that nobody can beat you at. And as long you are the best version of yourself, which you determine what to be, you will always drive value to the economy as a whole. And as long as your create impact in the economy, there will always be an opportunity up for the grabs, regardless of what the economic or macro-financial situation may be at that moment.

Now that I have summed up things from the employee side, let’s now take a look at how the employers or the executives are thinking about this from their end. At the end of the day, the hotshot CEOs need to run their respective company and ensure that the company does not go bankrupt regardless of the economic situation. And to do that, in the short term, they need cash and in the long term they need to ensure they have optimistic investments that drive their long term growth. For example, Amazon, from the public information that they have posted, relies on AWS and its stores business as its primary bread winner. Apart from this, they are hoping that other investments in services like Prime Video, Project Kuiper and ZOOX will drive them forward as a company in the long term. And in order for them to succeed as a company, they need to make sure that they have enough liquidity to be able to at least employ engineers in AWS and the stores business to drive their short term revenue. Given that the FED keeps increasing rates higher and higher, borrowing is completely out of scope. Borrowing more money at this crazy rate means they’ll have to pay a humongous amount to banks in interest, which is useless if you ask me. So, this basically means, they need to shed some fixed expenses, which they see as directly coming from the paychecks of the engineers they employ in not-so immediately lucrative investments like Alexa and Amazon Luna (cheers to you if you have heard about Luna before).

With all these ever dynamic conditions, they had to do the layoffs. This rule of thumb does not just apply to Amazon, but it applies to every major tech company. So, this is what is running on the heads of the CFOs and CEOs of your company, or should I more accurately say your ex-company at least for the time being. But, that being said, this whole scenario should have been handled with more nuance than how it was handled in all these companies. At the end of the day, even though we work on computers, we engineers are humans — we run on emotions and not on electrons.

Hypothethically speaking, if I were a CEO during this time, say I replaced Andy Jassy as the CEO of Amazon, I would have basically organized an all-hands meeting where I would have tried to connect with the employees. Let them know that I empathize with them — releasing company wide statements or press releases does not cut it. Then, rather than telling them that hey you are getting X months of pay as a severance check, I would assure them to trust themselves and in their abilities. To tell them that it is my goal as a CEO to ensure that we have them back at Amazon as soon as possible. Tell them to think of it as a paid vacation and that you would soon be happy to have them as soon as things normalize. This is how you build bonds and lead people — and not shy away in meeting rooms and behind the safety nets of exclusivity. But then again, on paper, I don’t stand next to Andy Jassy or any of the other CEOs doing the ‘L’ word.

Anyways, this is my 2 cents on it if you ask me. I am eagerly waiting for the next rocket to hop on and create value in the economy, and in the spare time inspire folks on medium and beyond.

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Cheers from

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