Yet another thinly veiled stealth lay-off by a technology company. Amazon’s cloud boss Matt “The Prat” Garman will indeed see some departures, as intended and desired. However, that first wave will be of their most talented, who feel confident they will land on their feet elsewhere, leaving those that simply cannot leave (yet) or those that will cozily under perform. When Amazon applies the inevitable followup reductions (subjectively based on their internal review process) to remove the latter, and the former buckle under the load or also leave, Amazon will be left with lower-middle talent at best.

The more I see of business “strategy” among this layer of “leadership”, the more I’m convinced it is just a game of Jenga with talent, resources, infrastructure, security, quality, etc; pulling out as many pieces as possible in the drive for short term/sighted gains until a company collapses under its own dysfunctional “efficiency” and “success”.

Court “ordered” end to a strike generally means that any contractual, union or legal protections workers have are forfeited if the strike continues (i.e. folks can be fired, benefits lost, even sued in some cases). This is not uncommon in regimes where the judicial system has been compromised (USA, Israel, etc). That being said… be a real shame if productivity of non-striking workers were to mysteriously plummet to effectively non-existent levels. ;-)