Bad news is not necessarily the right news…

21 February 2018

I was reading an article in Retail Week (a publication I like and read online every day) this morning about one of my favourite businesses, Amazon.

The headline read ‘Amazon swings axe on hundreds of head office jobs’. This headline obviously worked on me, because I read the article, intrigued that one of the world’s most successful retail businesses was getting rid of people.

It seemed true. Amazon was going to ‘slash hundreds of roles at its headquarters in Seattle and a similar number in global operations’. However, what made me smile was the way the article finished…

Yes, Amazon was ‘re-adjusting’ the numbers in its current headquarters and other offices, but Amazon continues to hire in far greater numbers than it cuts.

Counting only corporate roles, not those involved in Amazon’s warehouses, Amazon had 12,500 jobs available this week. Amazon is also apparently planning a second HQ where it expects to employ up to 50,000 staff.

The company disclosed in its last quarterly earnings update earlier this month that its global workforce comprised 566,000 people last December, 66% up on the previous year. It welcomed 150,000 new employees in 2017, created $50 billion of market capital and had 90 million paying Prime members in the USA as of September 2017 with an average spend of $1,300. But it was ‘slashing‘ hundreds of jobs in its Seattle HQ and around the globe.

As I said above, the article worked on me because I read it, but isn’t it a shame that we concentrate on the bad news rather than celebrate success?

There are currently many retail businesses that are struggling and we’ll no doubt see many high street favourites disappear, or change irrevocably over the next few years. That’s the price of the complete social and technological revolutions that society is going through currently.

If you haven’t read it, grab a copy of ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution’ by Klaus Schwab (from Amazon, of course) to see the extent of what is currently happening, and what is going to continue to happen incredibly quickly. It is a bit dry as a read but the content, in my opinion, is amazing.

We might be in the era of Fake News or Hate News. I’d much rather read Great News whenever possible.

Bryan