Some of these are obviously related to the closing of some of the retail businesses. And some might simply be middle management bloat that happens often at tech companies.

But imagine you're one of the people who remain (e.g., not impacted by the eliminated companies or products) and now there are fewer people to do the same amount of work? I've seen that movie and it usually has an economic impact 6-9 months later when people burn out.

It's almost like you can write the script:

Month 0–3: Survivors are relieved, grateful, and over-perform. Leadership reads this as “proof the cuts worked.”

Month 3–6: Context loss shows up. Decision latency increases. Domain knowledge walked out the door.

Month 6–9: Burnout, attrition, and quality failures begin. The “hidden layoffs” start as top performers quietly leave.

Month 9–12: Rehiring or contracting resumes (usually at higher cost)

The key misunderstanding here is assuming AI substitutes for organizational slack and human coordination. It doesn’t.

And sometimes middle management "bloat" is misdiagnosed. Remove them without redesigning decision rights and workflows, and the load doesn’t disappear it redistributes to the IC's.

Watch for Amazon "strategic investments" in early Q4 2026 (this will be a cover for the rehiring).

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jimbokun 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I've noticed at my company after a lot of layoffs and restructuring and moving people between projects, when I ask "who is responsible for X now?" there can be a lot of confusion getting the answer to that question.

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otikik 13 hours ago | parent [-]

“It was Bill, but he got laid off”. It doesn’t need to be confusing.

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watwut 12 hours ago | parent [-]

That is not an answer to the "who is responsible for X now" question. Laid off Bill is not responsible for X now.

Also, it is not useful answer at all, it is an uncooperative answer. Whoever is asking about the responsible person is trying to work. They have legitimate question about who they should contact about X, sending them to someone who does not work there is less then useless.

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GrinningFool 10 hours ago | parent [-]

But it doesn't change that Bill was the person who was responsible, and now is gone. So what exactly are they supposed to say? In the context of the GP's post, that seems to be the point - there is no longer anybody there who is responsible for X anymore.

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watwut 9 hours ago | parent [-]

> So what exactly are they supposed to say?

Several options, pretty much all of them involve being actually cooperative rather then intentionally unhelpful. If Bill was part of some other team, point to that team or its leader.

If he was in your team, you or leader can ask about what the person wants and move from there. Maybe you can actually answer the question. Maybe the proper reaction involves raising jira ticket. Maybe the answer is "we are probably not going to do that anymore". It all depends on what the person who came with the question wants.

> But it doesn't change that Bill was the person who was responsible, and now is gone.

The other people are still there. And the team IS responsible for X. And without doubt, they are fully responsible for helping figure out who should be contacted now and what should be done.

That is normal part of work after any reorganization.

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otikik 8 hours ago | parent [-]

You assume too much.

I have seen it many times that when Bill leaves, the thing he was responsible for doesn't get picked up by anyone.

It doesn't necessarily even mean that the organization is "abnormal". Perhaps the reason Bill was let go was because X was not considered business-critical any more.

	▲	watwut 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> I have seen it many times that when Bill leaves, the thing he was responsible for doesn't get picked up by anyone. I LITERALLY offered the "we are probably not going to do that anymore" option. In your situation, you can scratch the probably away. That answer is still actually helpful unlike the original answer.

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watwut 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I haven't detected overproduction after layoff I have seen. It was other way round, people who remained were sad, depressed and demotivated. What happened was general slow down of remaining people + organizational chaos as people did not figured out yet who should fill for missing positions and how.