Amazon CEO Andy Jassy discusses the economy, layoffs, unions and media
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Some of the biggest names in business are being interviewed at the annual New York Times DealBook Summit, where "every topic is fair game, and no question is out of bounds." Amazon (NASDAQ:NASDAQ:AMZN) CEO Andy Jassy was the latest to take the stage and go under the spotlight, providing some important insights into the company and the overall economy. Not only is Amazon one of the biggest employers in the country, but it can easily size up trends taking place across the retail space, while Amazon Web Services (responsible for the bulk of the company's profits) supports nearly a third of all cloud businesses.
Economic environment: "It's very clear that consumers are spending, but they are being very careful on trying to stretch their dollars. People care a lot about getting a bargain right now. They were attracted to stocking stuffers in an even more pervasive way than normal. In discretionary categories like computers, electronics or TVs, you see consumers trading down models just to try and get more for their money. In difficult and uncertain economies, we've found over time that consumers are very careful about who they partner with and they go with companies that are going to provide a great customer experience."
Layoffs: "It's the time of year that our leaders take a look at where they want to spend resources and where they should adjust. This year we had the lens of a very uncertain economic environment, as well as having hired very aggressively over the last several years. I think as we went through our plans, you just started seeing pretty similar trends, that the economy was more uncertain and things that were different than before, and we just felt that we needed to streamline our costs. One of the first things we did was to pause incremental hiring, but as we went through the plans, we realized we needed to be more slim on our resources."
Organized labor: "This is one of many topics in this country that is very hard to discuss and debate. The truth is, employees get to choose. It's not up to us, it is up to them. What we tell employees in our fulfillment centers is that we think they are better off without a union for a few reasons. If employees can make the experience better for customers or their fellow teammates - they can go fix it rather than a bureaucratic and slow [process]. We like to hear from all our employees, as opposed to being filtered through one or two voices, and it also champions an 'us vs. them' mentality that is not as productive. We have compelling benefits like a $19 minimum wage, full health insurance, 401k, up to 20 weeks of parental leave and a career choice program for an advanced education. In the U.S., only one of our facilities voted for a union in Staten Island. There were a lot of irregularities in that vote and it's working its way through the legal process."
Media: "Our Prime Video offering and all of that content is a really important ingredient when people choose to sign up for Prime or not. It's always something that has driven Prime subscriptions, but increasingly you are seeing more and more people signing up to Prime because of the video content. That's very attractive, and even when they sign up to Prime for the video content, they tend to spend money with us in our e-commerce offerings. I do think over time, we do have opportunities to make our Prime Video business a standalone business. What we want to do is provide the world with the best selection of streaming content for customers."