[HN Gopher] Amazon Q1/2022 [pdf] ___________________________________________________________________ Amazon Q1/2022 [pdf] Author : ckastner Score : 56 points Date : 2022-04-28 20:07 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (s2.q4cdn.com) (TXT) w3m dump (s2.q4cdn.com) | endisneigh wrote: | Feels like the tech bubble is bursting haha. Big co seems to be | relatively safe but so many others are down 50%+ YTD. | | Robinhood, Wish, Peloton, Affirm, Opendoor, Roku, etc. etc. | gitfan86 wrote: | TDOC,COIN,RIVN. Yes this seems like a good thing. The multiples | are getting more realistic | rvz wrote: | Indeed it is. More like the _Big Tech Crash of 2022._ | qgin wrote: | AMZN p/s is less than half of MCD | reducesuffering wrote: | P/S is almost never a comparable metric when margins like | Amazon retail can be like 5%. AMZN p/s is also 4x Walmart. | recuter wrote: | Bezos retired less than a year ago. | | Circa 2017 he owned 20% of AMZN. Presently he owns 10%. Back in | 1997 he owed 42%. | | https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2021/06/24/heres-... | xxpor wrote: | There might have been a major personal life event in there.... | chollida1 wrote: | I see he owns 49,927,744 shares as of march 2nd for an | ownership of 9.82%. | arberx wrote: | They guided lower: key take away | ArtWomb wrote: | AWS Rev $18.44B, ~3-4x GCloud, wow. Just got invite to re:MARS AI | & Space conf, Jun 24 las vegas ;) | | https://remars.amazonevents.com/ | [deleted] | StratusBen wrote: | Not only is it that high it's growing 37% year-over-year! | Really insane to see a business this large growing that | quickly. Still very much the early days of cloud infrastructure | adoption. | Weryj wrote: | As a recently departed employee. This section was a complete | joke. "Investing in Employees and Our Workplace". | | "These mental health benefits enhance existing benefits, which | include 24/7 access to free, one-on-one counseling sessions, | suicide prevention resources, and customized support." And by | that they mean those terrible app based counselling services. | | The best thing they did do was a free Headspace subscription, but | they cancelled it after 2 months. | | Edit: I just wanted to add one more thing, since I was working in | Canada my salary was half that of an American, but baselined | against the same people in Seattle. If I'm working at your high | American bar, I want your salary. Salt in the wound. | amazonthrow1231 wrote: | Amazon is a large company. Experiences are going to vary | widely. | | I work maybe 2 hours a day. Oncall is pretty light when I do | have it. Fulfilling team and projects with great career | opportunities. I have no meetings Wed-Fri. I have under 3 years | of experience and my compensation this year after reviews went | from: | | 164K base -> 218K base Total compensation: 220K for 2021 | calendar year -> 305K for 2022 calendar year -> 378K for 2023 | calendar year | | I'm pretty happy as an employee personally though I realize not | everyone is. | | Edit: Some commentators seem to be implying that I'm chasing | money and bringing down the culture of Amazon by not working | more - that seems ironic to me given Amazon has historically | been criticized for its sweatshop reputation. | | To clarify, I work 2 hours a week because that's all I need to | work to deliver my projects on time and I was rated TT this | year - so why would I work more? | jerglingu wrote: | This is a sentiment and self indulgent bragpost straight out | of the Blind app. To others on the outside looking in: while | there are corners of Amazon where it's possible to coast, a | huge amount of people are grinded to pieces and operate at | such a level of anxiety that they feel it's necessary to | commit code and manage tickets during nights and weekends to | keep pace. | Kranar wrote: | I am happy to hear the other side of it. It feels like only | the people who have an axe to grind are allowed to vent on | HN about their anecdotal experiences, and it's considered | taboo to share successes. | ignoramous wrote: | Won't be surprised if it's satire. | weakfish wrote: | Yeah, I wonder how the warehouse employees are faring. | endisneigh wrote: | who does all of the actual work if you're only working 2 | hours a day? | [deleted] | foobarian wrote: | He/she is probably a 10x engineer which means they get 20 | effective hours of work done per day. | mk89 wrote: | The parent commenter, probably :) | | Jokes aside, ... it's not uncommon in (such) large | organizations to be in the lucky team and that's it. With | all these people leaving, managers know how much you | actually work, but it's a win win. If the guy works 2 hours | a day but he is not a troublemaker, keep him. Hiring | someone better has become harder. | reducesuffering wrote: | Yes, that's why we generally disregard anecdotes and look at | data: | | https://www.teamblind.com/company/Amazon/reviews | | Amazon has terrible morale overall, with a 2.7 / 5 Work Life | Balance rating while most comparable companies, Google, | Microsoft, Apple, Twitter, etc. are averaging like 4 / 5. | strombofulous wrote: | I would want to see evidence to show blind is more than | just a collection of anecdotes before calling it "data". In | my (anecdotal, lol) experience the people who post on blind | are a small subset that are way more likely to complain | about things, sometimes unreasonably. | reducesuffering wrote: | How is that "small subset" not normalized across all | companies, making an equal comparison? You can make a | reasonable case that Blind reviews across all companies | are worse than the average inside the companies, but it | wouldn't explain why some companies are so much worse | than others. | strombofulous wrote: | Why can you assume it's normalized across all companies? | reducesuffering wrote: | What feasible reason would cause you to believe two | companies' internal morale are the same, even though only | one of them has disproportionately negative reviews? | | Feel free to only visit 2.5 star restaurants on Yelp | because clearly that must just be disgruntled people | disproportionately for no reason. | Weryj wrote: | Fair enough, the team I was on is falling apart and even | mentors are suggesting members transfer away. | | I tried to bring up the structural issues of the team, but it | took someone from another team to set them straight. I had | already left by then. | jjulius wrote: | >I'm pretty lucky* as an employee personally though I realize | not everyone is. | | FTFY. | lvl102 wrote: | Wow congrats on making $300K doing nothing! | | I realized this is very much the culture in Amazon now. | Because they're the top paying tech company it attracts | people who work for money and nothing more. That creates...a | certain culture. | nawgz wrote: | People who pan individuals in a capitalist society for | taking high-paying jobs make no sense to me. You assume | people that like to have financial security have what | culture about them exactly? Pragmatism? Realism? | mataug wrote: | > Because they're the top paying tech company it attracts | people who work for money and nothing more. That | creates...a certain culture. | | Are you suggesting that because the pay is high the culture | of Amazon is bad ? | | Why is working for money a bad thing ? Everyone is selling | their time in exchange for money. | | The primary reason for Amazon's bad culture is the | management, and their insistance on firing 6% of workers | each year[1]. This creates a culture where the people who | understand this system well will actively sabotage newbies | and naive devs to avoid getting canned. | | A lucky few with good VPs and directors may have a good | experience overall, but at some point the Amazon culture | catches up to everyone, except the executives who don't | face the same pressures. | | [1]https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-performance- | review-6-... | lvl102 wrote: | No that's not my point at all. If you're in that category | of engineers who basically chase money and work as little | as you can instead of chasing projects that align with | your passion, well, Amazon is probably where you will go. | Once you hit a critical mass of these people, it | completely sours the culture and it becomes an | irreversible black hole. | mataug wrote: | Life's much more complicated than the binary lens of | chasing money vs chasing projects. | | People change over time, someone might have a family, | they might encounter a medical situation, they may have | student loan debt. There are millions of scenarios which | could cause a person to choose working for a pay bump. | | My point is none of these reasons will sour the culture | as much as management putting employees through a zero | sum, hunger games like scenario. | | At the end of the day all of this stems Bezos's belief | that employees are all inherently lazy, this trickles | down to all the executives. | | https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-polices-based- | jeff-be... | [deleted] | amazonthrow1231 wrote: | It's entirely possible to chase both of those things. :) | lvl102 wrote: | And of course you can but usually the money just follows | along. And I've not met a single person in my life who | works two hours a day on his/her passion. None. | | Edit: correction it was two hours per WEEK. | nawgz wrote: | Yeah, because most people spend 0 hours a day working on | their passion, instead exchanging hard time doing an | activity they hate for too little money. | | Working 2 hours a day for a fat paycheck sounds like a | better way to enable yourself to spend time on your | passions than deluding yourself into the belief that the | capitalist entity extracting multiples of your TC as | value for itself is enabling you to "follow your passion" | while you work | lotsofpulp wrote: | > Because they're the top paying tech company it attracts | people who work for money and nothing more. That | creates...a certain culture. | | Do you think this is less prevalent at lower labor prices? | currio wrote: | > Because they're the top paying tech company it attracts | people who work for money and nothing more | | Thats most (big) tech companies | lvl102 wrote: | Amazon is going to rot from the inside by the MBAs they | hired to run the company instead of engineers. | jjtheblunt wrote: | having worked there for shy of a year (not in AWS, by | random placement), i think your verb tense is true but | misses the fact it long has been rotting. | | but they exact a huge "tax" on items sold on the site, so | they can survive incompetence for quite some time. | pinkmuffinere wrote: | Wow, can you say what team/area you're in? Legitimately would | love to transfer over if i have the right skills -- I'm a sys | dev engineer at Amazon, but am working long hours, getting | burned out, and paid way less. | deskamess wrote: | Not the poster but no way am I outing my self. This is a | sacred team you do not talk about. | paxys wrote: | It's like a company hanging suicide nets outside their | buildings and patting themselves on the back for caring about | employees. | jjtheblunt wrote: | Foxconn? | rdtsc wrote: | It's bad enough that they felt the need to insert a mental | health line item in the filing. To them it seems "we're so | nice, let's boast about it" kind of a thing. To me it reads | like a warning: "you'll need that mental health help if you | work here". | bamboozled wrote: | It's amazing how many people I know avoid using Amazon because | of how employees are treated, if it didn't treat people so | badly it would be much more popular. Maybe abusing workers is | how it became so successful at the scale it is ? | jjtheblunt wrote: | There was a "leak" of internal HR documents etc about a year | ago saying just that. It's on HN somewhere, but how to search | for it I do not know. | axg11 wrote: | Adding a counterpoint here. I work at Amazon and am very happy. | It's a big company. Team matters. Feel free to AMA if you are | considering joining. | chollida1 wrote: | Numbers: | | - Q1 Operating Income 3.7B est 5.42B, wow, that's a big miss | | - Q1 Net Sales 116.4B vs Est of 116.43, | | - AWS Net $18.4B EST 18.2B | | - subscription sales | | - operating margin 3.2% vs 4.7Est, that's another big miss | | - loss of 7.56/share vs a profit of 15.79/share a year ago, again | highlights the danger of a very low margin business model that | makes it up on volume, when all your inputs go up in price. | | - their first quarterly loss in 7 years. | | - international business was down a fair bit, both in profits and | sales, This is something to watch as US sales are probably not a | growth area anymore and bulls were watching this areas | specifically for growth. Not only fail to grow here but to show a | loss is concerning. | | - their trailing 12M P/E was 124 and their forward 12M P/E is 55, | so everyone expects far less growth in the future | | Notes: | | - looks like its the sales forcast that algos seem to hate | | - reporting a loss for Q1 and projecting another loss for Q2, | given that we're long gone from the run at a loss to grow days of | Amazon, this is something to watch. Maybe people are finally | starting to buy local again? | | - starting to bring down other ecommerce companies which helps | support the people buying in person thesis some analysts have | been pushing | | - From Bloomberg, Worldwide shipping costs jumped 14% to $19.6 | billion. Meanwhile, revenue from online store sales dropped 3% | and revenue from third-party sellers services increased 9%. | Inflation is exposing the dangers of Amazon's low-margin | e-commerce model that has conditioned customers to expect low | prices and quick delivery. | | - price of a prime membership is going up, probably a good idea, | i know people who have given up netflix, I know no one who has | given up a prime membership. Far more value with prime than | netflix. | | - retention of employee's could be interesting to watch as a | stock that could very likely be worth less in a years time than | it is now would be a big paycut for alot of devs. | | - shares down 10% at one point. Option implied movement is 7.6% | so this is an oversized move. | | - Rivian really boosted amazon last year adding 11.8B to their | bottom line but the stock forced amazon to take a 7.6B loss on | Rivian this quarter, so I guess this isn't something to be | concerned with as this was never real anyway. | | - interestingly, the CFO just said they have too many people at | teh company, though he didn't clarify if it was warehouse or | developers, I'm guessing its mostly the former and any developer | head count downsizing will come from employees who leave due to a | share price that is coming down | sheepybloke wrote: | I think the bigger thing is that there is more bad products on | Amazon now. I've found myself going to Target or other more | specific stores (e.g. Rei for camping supplies, etc) for goods | because a lot of the stuff I see on Amazon isn't what I want to | buy. For example, I was looking for an adapter for my Macbook | and all the adapters were basically just chinese rebrands of | the same adapter. I finally gave up and got a Belkin one from | Best Buy because I couldn't find a comparable thing on Amazon. | I think this is happening a lot and really hurting them in that | sector. | tempnow987 wrote: | I also went to REI recently, same reason. My wife likes | target. Both BTW do pickup which gives you a bit of the | online convenience in my book (target is a big store to grind | through otherwise). | lotsofpulp wrote: | I assume Amazon is trying to jettison retail since it is a | sub 5% profit margin business. A lot of work for not much | gain. | | They would rather be in the AWS/logistics | platform/music/video business. | tempnow987 wrote: | Wow, I had no idea rivian was 172/share / $150B (!!) market | cap. That's 3x Ford's market cap. Of course now they are in | $30/share range. | jjulius wrote: | >Interestingly, the CFO just said they have too many people at | the company, though he didn't clarify if it was warehouse or | developers... | | I found one! | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31197990 | booboofixer wrote: | > Maybe people are finally starting to buy local again? | | I'm sorry i dont know how to read these reports, but do they | have numbers for usage of amazon prime? My guess would be | people aren't buying local or online, they just aren't buying a | lot of things anymore because of inflation. | greatpostman wrote: | Amazon gave everyone big base raises, pretty clear they knew the | stock was going down. This company is going to fall on hard | times, a lot of current employees have not been treated well | iLoveOncall wrote: | Employees have not been treated well for a very long time and | the stock performed just fine then. | greatpostman wrote: | They got away with it precisely because the stock was booming | Barrera wrote: | From CNBC: | | > Growth rates are at their slowest since the dot-com bust in | 2001. | | > The company recorded a $7.6 billion loss on its investment in | electric vehicle maker Rivian. | | > Earnings: $7.38 per share, adjusted, vs. $8.36 expected, | according to Refinitiv | | https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/28/amazon-amzn-q1-2022-earnings... | | This is a terrible report for a company of the size and in the | leading retail position that Amazon is. Amazon has never been a | company where price to earnings ratios mattered much, but a 12% | miss is not small potatoes. It bodes very poorly for earnings | reports from second-tier consumer products companies and | distributors. | deskamess wrote: | Not good for shareholders but AMZN has always reinvested in | itself at the expense of everyone else. It is the Amazon way. | xchaotic wrote: | No longer focused on growth it seems. | McLaren_Ferrari wrote: | How can you grow when you sell 500B dollars of products per | year? | jjtheblunt wrote: | expand to the next planet? | Jayakumark wrote: | Kind of expected on EPS as Rivian took the hit compared to Last | quarter. | qgin wrote: | Not super rational for market rates act surprised at RIVN | contribution since the RIVN stock price is available to anyone | who cares every second of every day. No reason to drop it after | hours today for that. | mediaman wrote: | I think the market is (hopefully) reacting to margins on | their core retail business, and top-line guidance. RIVN has | added lots of noise to earnings. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-28 23:00 UTC)