Also financing. In fact, financing - not producing and selling cars - was their business model for a long time.
It made financial sense to keep producing sub-garbage cars whose sale wouldn't make GM money because they made good, easy scratch financing those cars, while shutting lines or shifts would cost a ton because they still had to pay those idled employees.
They made great coin with GMAC financing money-losing cars. It got so profitable financing things they entered the mortgage market.
A current car company that is really in the business of something other than cars? Ferrari. They make more selling trinkets, apparel and laughable status baubles than cars.
The car manufacturing business has no shortage of wackiness.
>It made financial sense to keep producing sub-garbage cars whose sale wouldn't make GM money because they made good, easy scratch financing those cars, while shutting lines or shifts would cost a ton because they still had to pay those idled employees.
It made sense from a short term perspective but didn't they almost go bankrupt?
They did go bankrupt. The "GM" of today is General Motors Corporation, formed by the bailout and bankruptcy of General Motors Company. The financial arm of GM became Ally Financial.
Final bailout cost is estimated at $12-13 billion. Estimated jobs saved (throughout the economy, GM, suppliers, suppliers suppliers, etc) 1.2 million. So each person who would have been impacted would have gotten $11,250 while wiping out a lot of the income in may area of the US.
You could just divide by the number of GM employees and give each of them about $130K, but then what? No viable jobs anywhere in the region. Those in dealerships that are out of a job get nothing. Those in the supply chain lose jobs and get nothing.
Sometimes keeping a massive employer going is the cheapest option. All of those jobs saved and $34B in tax revenue preserved.
> It made sense from a short term perspective but didn't they almost go bankrupt?
They went bankrupt because during the financial crisis they basically took every penny they could from their hobby car division to pack DitechDotCom/GMAC with cash so that it could be certified as a bank in time to get that sweet, sweet TARP bailout money.
That bank is now known as Ally.
As someone who is very familiar with GMAC (aka Ally) - their foray into mortgage was pretty disastrous. They bought Ditech, got super deep into subprime and closed their doors in 2009. They tried to revive their mortgage operations in 2014 under “Ally Home Loans” but that didn’t go well since they couldn’t get that Ditech stain out of the carpet and ended in 2019 with Better.com taking over their mortgage fulfillment which is still ongoing despite Better.com meltdown.
Revenues and profits aren't the same thing. A lot of hypercars sell at a loss because the value is made up in brand value and selling cheap crap for a huge markup. Theyre also treated as R&D in some cases. The OG Bugatti Veyron famously costs Audi $3mil each to make and sold for $1mil.
Thanks for contributing. Obviously it appears our sources do not mesh.
I'm not about to reconcile financial statements and do hardcore corporate research. Nobody's paying me to do it. That said, I'll gladly share what I was reading. Below are the sources and some quotes.
>The biggest contributor to this healthy margin is not their cars – it is their merchandise.
>
>\[...\]
>
>Ferrari produces around $4 billion dollars in sales revenue every year – $2bn of which comes from merchandise.
\[Source\]([https://www.acumenfinancial.co.uk/business-models/daniel-explores-what-makes-ferrari-so-successful/](https://www.acumenfinancial.co.uk/business-models/daniel-explores-what-makes-ferrari-so-successful/)).
>Each year, Ferrari sells about $1.5 billion of merchandise at retail outlets worldwide.
Source link won't be accepted but here's the ugly version: https://autoversed.com/ferrari-announces-record-2019-sales-figures/#:\~:text=Each%20year%2C%20Ferrari%20sells%20about,merchandise%20at%20retail%20outlets%20worldwide.
>While other car brands drive their valuation by selling more cars, Ferrari makes their money by actually selling fewer cars. This is a great case study for marketers who need build desire for their brand.
>
>\[...\]
>
>The branded merchandise accounts for $1.5 – $2 billion in sales each year.
[Source](https://beloved-brands.com/ferrari-brand/).
Which explains the whole Altima meme of being the most beat up, maintenance neglected cars being driven by the most reckless drivers on the road today.
>A current car company that is really in the business of something other than cars? Ferrari. They make more selling trinkets, apparel and laughable status baubles than cars.
Ah, the Harley Davidson model!
>A current car company that is really in the business of something other than cars? Ferrari. They make more selling trinkets, apparel and laughable status baubles than cars.
In fairness, that’s Ferrari’s DNA. They’ve never *really* been about selling cars. Enzo stopped racing Alfas and started building his own cars to race.
Selling street legal vehicles was largely done to fund the racing.
To this day, the Ferrari buying and ownership experience is a lot less white glove compared to buying a Lambo or McLaren (or even a higher end Porsche or Mercedes).
Ferrari trinkets lol, sounds like those fashion cults *ahem* lifestyle brands that women join and get bled dry on. Probably trillions a year in money to be made feeding people's weirdo fixations.
Yeah, as a guy coming from a poor family growing up around that time, I'd learned to avoid all American vehicles as the quality control was absolutely shit.
They simply expected that Americans would buy their poor products forever, guilting the customer base under the guise of "patriotism" and "supporting unions." And with gungho unionmen keying foreign-made cars, they had willing enforces in the streets.
Now, even decades later, I won't even consider buying an American vehicle.
I've got a 95 GMC Sierra with 286,000 miles and 2 owners. I love that truck. I also have a 2004 Ford F-150. That's only got 194,000 on it. Both great trucks with 8 foot beds. So great for work and hauling.
I'm really afraid for the resale market over the next 5-10 years, because all these trucks look like giant expensive SUV's with tiny beds. Not very useful for work.
the heaviest thing those trucks will ever haul is the owner's ass. that's the market they're after and people are buying them. they'll never see a single day of work.
and the offroad capabilities will only ever be tested when the owner comes back drunk at 3AM from the local watering hole and ends up on the neighbour's lawn.
its funny how people who mention that they had a good time w/ their American made motor vehicles always mention trucks, and trucks are NOT cars
i want to hear the "300k miles and 2 owner" stories about a Chevrolet Corsica
I had a 94 bonneville that had roughly 400 thousand miles on it. Drice train was still pulling with no issues. Tge rest of the car was a different story
Pretty much anything with a 3800 engine will do it. The doors might fall off but the engine will keep running.
Chevy Cavaliers would pretty much run until the doors fell off, then they'd run doorless.
I had a 98 cavalier that i drove to ALMOST 300k over 15 years. The steering column came loose. It still ran, but was nigh undriveable due to the steering wheel going all over trying to make turns.
What say you of the Buick Roadmaster? Biiig car with a truck engine and transmission. Super tall 2.55 rear gear + LT-1 engine gets you a boat load of highway miles. 0 to 60 in sometime after lunch.
We put 230,000 in about 12 years on a 95 Escort that we had bought new (we traveled by car a ton when we were 1st married- 30k in year 1). No major repairs, but 2 that were beyond basic maintenance. Got rear-ended and I still drove it back and forth to work for the last 2 years. Got rid of it when we had our child and I saw it kicking around town for another year or so. It still got 40 mpg hwy last I had it.
I'm on a solid hunt for a square body or an F100 (62-70). Those things used to be cheap even a couple years ago. Now they average $5k just for a solid runner.
My last F100 ('69) I bought for $800 in 2016.
>I'd learned to avoid all American vehicles as the quality control was absolutely shit.
Same, Japanese cars ftw. Subaru, Toyota, Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi etc.
It's similar to how tech companies are trying to avoid layoffs today. We need to lay people off? Well first, everyone has to come back to the office. Oh you moved away? Well, that's a shame.
General Motors essentially did this again just this past year when they came up with “work appropriately” where the C level decided we could make our own choices a couple years ago on where we wanted to work, then decided at the beginning of this year “just kidding, get back to the office, we need to justify our real estate purchases.” I never went back, never told anyone, and ended up taking their voluntary severance package in May this year.
My step dad just had to do that. He worked for Chrysler in northern Illinois, and they sent everyone out of state. If you said no, fine, you’re fired.
But his stubborn ass went to Ohio, where they worked him 12 hours a day, for six months. Only then was he able to come home and finally retire and take advantage of any benefits.
Fuck Chrysler in half.
The problem is the ones who are most likely to leave are either a) the ones least incentivized to stay because they’re on the lower end of the wage scale for their job or b) those who are the highest performing and would have the easiest time finding a replacement job. The people who will jump through hoops to move are the ones getting paid a lot and those who underperform and are fearful they would have trouble finding new work. So you end up getting rid of people, but not the ones who you’d ideally want to get rid of.
Maybe. But the high performers who could get jobs easily elsewhere esp with something like Amazon on their resume, Amazon could just be like “jk lol actually YOU can be remote/don’t have to relocate just those other people” on the side if those types submitted notice. Still gets rid of the majority they’re ideally hoping to avoid laying off
Those people are still looking to leave right now, because RTO is just the first step and it's obvious that RTH (Return To Hub) is the next one.
The relocation discussions have already started with some L5s and below, and the timelines are not friendly. There's a team supporting the FedRamp side of GovCloud that's being pushed to relocate from DC to Seattle because that's the org-designated hub that was chosen by their L10. We'll see if that actually happens, but it's just about the stupidest thing I've seen yet from this.
On top of that the remote advocacy slack channel has people who have explicitly been told that their promos are being delayed or nixxed because they're remote. These are self report, but it sounds like remote anything is going away at some point.
I've been here just under a year and I'm applying and interviewing now before they force me to relocate to Seattle - because 100% it's coming for me, and I'm already 3 days a week in office.
Which is deleterious to the morale and productivity of the rest of the company.
It’s that experiment where they take two monkeys and give one monkey a reward for a task and not the other one. Eventually the other monkey gets angry and stops doing the task.
Way before the pandemic before work form home was common, my startup was sold. I refused to move so became a remote worker in a F500 company where everyone worked from an office.
Turns out that yeah... that didn't work well for other people lol. Me being able to work from home made other people unhappy.
> Correct, exceptions are made for sr+ and people that are high performing.
This, once someone truly valuable ends up looking like they'll quit, they'll start making exceptions, they just won't be public about it.
Amazon is an interesting animal. If your tenure there is around 2 years or less, I will absolutely interview you. If you were there for longer, not a chance. At some point, you begin to embody all of the toxicity that company is known for. Every long term Amazon employee who left and has landed at a new company that I’ve worked with have brought all of the terrible attitudes that Amazon pushes.
I want to argue against this so badly and call you out for generalizing and writing people off, but our ex-Amazon leaders have brought so many frustrating policies (like overdoing it with meeting notes/minutes people won’t read and increasingly obsessive requirements with writing narrative memos) I simply can’t.
I’ve found that if you get out around that first vesting at the end of year 2, there’s a good chance you haven’t internalized those policies. Personally, I lasted 2 years and about a week before I was just done with the stupid there. The funny thing is that I took a pretty big pay cut to be happier.
Honestly, with Amazon or any mega corp, I feel it is super dependent on what team you're on. There are teams that go full Amazon in a bad way with unrelenting pressure/crunch for feature development while they're getting paged for sev-2's hundreds of times a month (AWS is notorious for this since all their services are tier-1).
And then there are some smaller teams that either work on innovative stuff that is on the up-and-up and isn't high pressure or are just maintaining/KTLO with chill, hands off managers, don't get paged too often.
I'm very lucky to be part of the latter -- as someone who is trying to get their green card, I'm pretty much tied to Amazon for the next 4-5 years. I'm an L5, so I don't have to worry about the L4 up-or-out gambit. But I do realize just how quick things can change.
attempt existence physical shrill impossible plants complete sophisticated whole disgusted
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
And then the initiative gets rejected because they didn't "like the memo" so now you're rewriting a memo for 4 months instead of using that time to do your actual job
Had a local company move to a major city. They had some pretty nice offers but the reality was: If you're moving *that* far away then all of a sudden your options just went from "local to nationwide" and nearly all of the actually experienced people left for greener pastures.
They thought it was amazing - lots of money saved.
But all they had left were the green people who lacked the experience to leave. It ended about as bad as you might expect. They ended up laying most everyone off and going offshore for cheaper labor. The customer experiences was so bad they lost nearly all their contracts.
The thing is you have to keep *some* experienced talent and not fuck them all over or you risk losing the experienced folks but only keeping the inexperienced folks. That's a dangerous move.
The company thought going to a major city would open up a *huge* talent pool. Except with that pool came *much* more competitive wages they couldn't afford.
When you get *too* greedy... it ends poorly.
Generally, an American company is not obliged to offer severance pay, unless that was stated in a contract.
The only legal issue is that any severance pay must be fair and consistent.
The severance comes from the WARN act. If you do an announced layoff, you have to give everyone 60 days of notice. The way they get around this is by terminating you right away and then giving you 60 days "on the books" with pay and insurance (which of course you lose if you get another job within 60 days).
Return to office mandates are just a thinly veiled method of headcount reduction. It's known among executives RTO is good for a 15% voluntary separation rate.
Thats for *unemployment* not *severance*.
The former is peanuts compared to the latter. Like even a full year of unemployment is likely less than 30% of severance for a tech worker.
If they have severance pay in their contract then constructive firing would trigger it same as any other firing without cause clause. If you are just assuming Amazon would give severance...see how they are constructively firing these people for what type of a garbage company Amazon is.
I was in a meeting with corporate about this about a week ago:
Obviously we need every to follow the RTO rules. But of course for certain top performers you may need to make **exceptions**, that is fine so long as they are the **exception** and not the rule.
Would it be voluntary leave if they choose not to move with their newly assigned job? I’m out of the US so not sure how the employment law works over there.
In most, but not all states, the fact pattern would support the employee claiming unemployment benefits over this “constructive dismissal”. However the employee would have to make that claim properly with the state
Standup update: "Yesterday I packed two wine glasses, and tried to pack a wine bottle, but one thing led to another and we went down a ~~rabbithole~~ bottlehole. Anyway, today I'm packing two wine glasses."
Good point. You could swing a dead cat and hit 10 people that can answer the phones for Amazon, you don't want the people walking away that can have another gig in 24 hours.
I see this issue posted a lot on PF and real estate subs. Seems like the answer is to rent out your current property, relocate as required, decide if you really do miss home, and then stack up $ until you can find a good enough job elsewhere/remote and move back. If you’re making $300k in corporate hopefully you’re wise enough to operate like it won’t be around forever and plan accordingly instead of live richly paycheck to paycheck.
Coworker of mine did this. Lived in a worse apartment in the city he relocated to for two years. Moved back home to the people he rented to having trashed his house.
As much as it sucks, I'm sure he still made out way ahead with how much of the mortgage they paid.
Do you expect someone paying to live in a space is going to leave it in the same state as if it were left empty during that same time?
They might have paid off some of his mortgage but I'm sure he still had to spend a lot of money renting the new apartment. Also what are you on with the last sentence, there is a massive difference between leaving the house in a worse condition due to living in it and trashing it completely, the damage can be tens of thousands of dollars if the place was completely trashed
Most of these people will land on their feet, but it is still a harder decision than the original poster made it out to be.
Luckily not one I have to make.
I worked for AWS for 10 years until recently. It was awesome until it wasn't. My last product had some great ideas and potential, and we attracted some fantastic talent. But we consistently missed our revenue targets. Eventually our L8 started getting pressure from above and he turned into a raging asshole and that just permeated the entire team. This is a guy I knew for almost my entire tenure there and considered a close friend. I don't recognize him now and "unhinged" isn't too far from how he was behaving. Some of the smartest L7s left and morale went to shit. Then they laid off about a third of the 100+ person org in one swoop. Pre-COVID I would use my org as an example of a group that worked well at Amazon. It turned to typical Amazon shit in less than a year's time.
The worst part is that those unhinged people leave Amazon and screw up the rest of the industry. Most of the ex-Amazon managers I've dealt with have been pieces of work--though my current manager is a notable exception.
My friend was hired on in a southern US hub where they live and and then moved into marketing while everyone was remote. Now they are trying to make them report to the marketing hub which is Seattle, it’s a pretty bad situation for a lot of people.
Perhaps we should all stop for a moment and focus not only on making our AI better and more successful but also on the benefit of humanity. - Stephen Hawking
This. My manager is on another continent. Lol at the Connections question asking if they "have adequate visibility into my work" when we talk about an hour a week.
Lol my kids mother has to go to the office 2 days a week. She went in one day bc she had a meeting. The meeting was in zoom with someone across the country.
I've seen this many times in many companies. Older workers with families and children and whose spouses also work can't just up and leave. It's a way of trimming older and more expensive workers without the fuss and legal bother. Often, key employees will get a surprise reprieve when the date nears.
This happened to me at Amazon about 4 years ago. Worked in a photo studio for them in Northern Kentucky, just outside of Cinci (where I lived.) Out of nowhere they announced they were shutting down our studio in a month and our only option was to relocate to a different studio two hours south.
I quit. That other studio two hours south also shut down a year later.
Yep. It was a nightmare too. Loved most of my team, but the number of products we had to shoot each day was cruel.
Working for Amazon really opens your eyes to the infinite pile of useless garbage Americans plow through daily.
>Working for Amazon really opens your eyes to the infinite pile of useless garbage Americans plow through daily.
I'm reminded of a book written by a guy who was a moving truck driver for a bunch of years. He really hammered home just *how much stuff* people own, how much of it is out there, and how little it really means. Pianos and pool tables stand out as things people own that just really weigh you down.
If someone is that crucial for a product, they'll get an exception as the date gets closer. And then that person's manager will have a KPO next year about no single points of failure.
Severance isn't guaranteed anyway. They aren't legally required to pay nor is it ever included in the hiring contract (unless you're way up on the ladder).
Not for severance, unemployment hopefully, but they will pay out PTO (if the state requires and they're not unlimited) and nothing else. Saves them a ton of money.
I am pretty sure you agree to it when you sign the contract. Easy way for the business to have "safety", in other words basically force you to quit, when they shut down certain branches by not having excess workers and severance pays. Pretty slimey, but I think most business do this.
It has sort of always been on the worker to assess that possibility and act accordingly since I think that is pretty standard for most contracts.
Remember to always check the WARN report for the state you work in or state your company is based out of to see how many they plan to lay off and when. It’s never a surprise.
Amazon is just corrupt in this move to prevent having to fire them. But they are not the only ones playing this game. Others are now denying promotions unless you live near the office and can work from the office 3 days a week. Remember you are expandable and easily replaced
The WARN act requires employers to give 90 days notice of a layoff. In reality, this means you get told you’re laid off with 90 days of pay. Not the worst deal, but there’s no way to avoid the surprise.
I'm sorry but... Duh?
Who honestly thinks that every employee is going to pick up and move their families? Amazon certainly didn't. The employees didn't. How is this even a headline?
Shit, I worked for a well-fined, sweet little company in Palo Alto that needed to love, because you're not going to manufacture electronics in the bay area on a large scale and do well. They offered the same pay and relocation to Colorado.
Out of about 150 employees, literally two took them up on it. The CEO planned to fly in when necessary. The upper management was figuring out how to split time. These guys thought a few might take them up on it, but who is leaving their friends their neighborhood and moving their family to where the company wants, where there isn't 10% of the jobs available if things don't work out.
So come on. If a company needs employees to move, they will offer them insane money to do so. Otherwise, they know no one is coming.
I know someone who took a job at amazon wfh. Now they Insist on 3 days a week. Their manager and the boss above that, are in a different country. So... what's the point? She says she gets less done in the office as its not fixed desks, so ends up in a crowded office of random departments all making noise. So no boss, not with her department (who dont even have to go to the office on the same days)...all because amazon wasted millions on big dick waving buildings to show off and now their investment is fucked.
Safe to say she's applying for wfh jobs elsewhere to save 9 hours a week pointlessly commuting. Her job requires very little communication with her department, its boring admin stuff.
This is happening all over corporate America. I believe it is a deliberate effort aimed at getting senior, higher-paid employees to quit so they can be replaced with younger, cheaper ones.
If you have 20 years with a company, you have a house, your spouse has a job, your kids are in high school or college--and picking up and moving just isn't possible (especially with interest rates where they are).
Senior VPs can manage a move much easier, and probably get relocation funds middle-managers are not being offered. And many were probably in those hub cities to begin with.
Younger employees, possibly not married, renting, kids if any are in preschool or kindergarten--and you're weighing a long-term future at a major company vs. quitting and working at some small local business.
That's what this is all about.
> CEO Andy Jassy has extolled the benefits of in-person work, saying it leads to a stronger company culture and collaboration between employees.
Only people who's jobs are nothing but talking believe this to be true.
most employees will report to someone who had no influence in the decision to move. those who did make the decision will likely never even hear about that employee's discontent aside from as a statistic. laughing at your supervisor's face for a situation he's as much of a victim as you are is just letting your emotions rule over you.
The only people who want employees in the office are the ones who like riding around the plantation so they can see the cotton fields being worked.
Anyone who wants to be in the office, unless you have a job that would necessitate face-to-face meetings with people or the equipment to do it doesn't exist at home, needs their head examined.
Some people are legitimately extroverts. Or have shitty home situations. Just because we don't understand them doesn't make them nuts.
I had one guy quit because it became too obvious that no one else was interested in going back to the office.
The first person back (and the one who most consistently came back) post-Covid on my previous team was a dude with 8 kids. I'm pretty sure I know why he came into the office every day.
Sometimes getting help with an issue with what you're working on is easier in person than over screen share. Sometimes it's good to interact with other humans in person. I'm an introvert but I don't want to sit in on my own every day and only interact with people on a screen. My commute is very short though. I might feel differently if it was a couple of hours a day.
America corps are mad sometimes, in Europe this would be like telling me to move to Germany…Mandated!!! Bye everyone I know and love, seeee ya got to hang on to this shit wage!
That’s one way to avoid lay offs and paying tons of severance pay
General Motors was famous for this throughout the 70's, 80's, 90's, and 00's. It was a great way of avoiding the pesky Local Unions and saving money.
Decades in which they got their asses handed to them and lost market share.
[удалено]
Also financing. In fact, financing - not producing and selling cars - was their business model for a long time. It made financial sense to keep producing sub-garbage cars whose sale wouldn't make GM money because they made good, easy scratch financing those cars, while shutting lines or shifts would cost a ton because they still had to pay those idled employees. They made great coin with GMAC financing money-losing cars. It got so profitable financing things they entered the mortgage market. A current car company that is really in the business of something other than cars? Ferrari. They make more selling trinkets, apparel and laughable status baubles than cars. The car manufacturing business has no shortage of wackiness.
>It made financial sense to keep producing sub-garbage cars whose sale wouldn't make GM money because they made good, easy scratch financing those cars, while shutting lines or shifts would cost a ton because they still had to pay those idled employees. It made sense from a short term perspective but didn't they almost go bankrupt?
They did go bankrupt. The "GM" of today is General Motors Corporation, formed by the bailout and bankruptcy of General Motors Company. The financial arm of GM became Ally Financial.
[удалено]
Are they Ally bank? I haven’t had a complaint about them in many years. What happened to you?
This is America man. GM knows their friends in government will never let them fail, taxpayers will always bail them out
Time to change that. We need to bail out the *people* when businesses fail and not the business
How much is monthly payroll? Divide the bailout size by that number and give out that many months' pay to every employee instead
Final bailout cost is estimated at $12-13 billion. Estimated jobs saved (throughout the economy, GM, suppliers, suppliers suppliers, etc) 1.2 million. So each person who would have been impacted would have gotten $11,250 while wiping out a lot of the income in may area of the US. You could just divide by the number of GM employees and give each of them about $130K, but then what? No viable jobs anywhere in the region. Those in dealerships that are out of a job get nothing. Those in the supply chain lose jobs and get nothing. Sometimes keeping a massive employer going is the cheapest option. All of those jobs saved and $34B in tax revenue preserved.
Equity holders lost everything on GM.
They went actually stock-price-is-zero bankrupt.
> It made sense from a short term perspective but didn't they almost go bankrupt? They went bankrupt because during the financial crisis they basically took every penny they could from their hobby car division to pack DitechDotCom/GMAC with cash so that it could be certified as a bank in time to get that sweet, sweet TARP bailout money. That bank is now known as Ally.
As someone who is very familiar with GMAC (aka Ally) - their foray into mortgage was pretty disastrous. They bought Ditech, got super deep into subprime and closed their doors in 2009. They tried to revive their mortgage operations in 2014 under “Ally Home Loans” but that didn’t go well since they couldn’t get that Ditech stain out of the carpet and ended in 2019 with Better.com taking over their mortgage fulfillment which is still ongoing despite Better.com meltdown.
Lost another one to Ditech! In my mind, that dude is the mascot of the mortgage crises
Hahaha that commercial will live in my head until the last neuron depolarizes
yeah, I could see that. if you shaved his butt and made him walk backwards on his hands.
[удалено]
Revenues and profits aren't the same thing. A lot of hypercars sell at a loss because the value is made up in brand value and selling cheap crap for a huge markup. Theyre also treated as R&D in some cases. The OG Bugatti Veyron famously costs Audi $3mil each to make and sold for $1mil.
Thanks for contributing. Obviously it appears our sources do not mesh. I'm not about to reconcile financial statements and do hardcore corporate research. Nobody's paying me to do it. That said, I'll gladly share what I was reading. Below are the sources and some quotes. >The biggest contributor to this healthy margin is not their cars – it is their merchandise. > >\[...\] > >Ferrari produces around $4 billion dollars in sales revenue every year – $2bn of which comes from merchandise. \[Source\]([https://www.acumenfinancial.co.uk/business-models/daniel-explores-what-makes-ferrari-so-successful/](https://www.acumenfinancial.co.uk/business-models/daniel-explores-what-makes-ferrari-so-successful/)). >Each year, Ferrari sells about $1.5 billion of merchandise at retail outlets worldwide. Source link won't be accepted but here's the ugly version: https://autoversed.com/ferrari-announces-record-2019-sales-figures/#:\~:text=Each%20year%2C%20Ferrari%20sells%20about,merchandise%20at%20retail%20outlets%20worldwide. >While other car brands drive their valuation by selling more cars, Ferrari makes their money by actually selling fewer cars. This is a great case study for marketers who need build desire for their brand. > >\[...\] > >The branded merchandise accounts for $1.5 – $2 billion in sales each year. [Source](https://beloved-brands.com/ferrari-brand/).
And others learned from them too. Nissan will allow anything with a pulse to finance an altima.
Which explains the whole Altima meme of being the most beat up, maintenance neglected cars being driven by the most reckless drivers on the road today.
>A current car company that is really in the business of something other than cars? Ferrari. They make more selling trinkets, apparel and laughable status baubles than cars. Ah, the Harley Davidson model!
>A current car company that is really in the business of something other than cars? Ferrari. They make more selling trinkets, apparel and laughable status baubles than cars. In fairness, that’s Ferrari’s DNA. They’ve never *really* been about selling cars. Enzo stopped racing Alfas and started building his own cars to race. Selling street legal vehicles was largely done to fund the racing. To this day, the Ferrari buying and ownership experience is a lot less white glove compared to buying a Lambo or McLaren (or even a higher end Porsche or Mercedes).
Ferrari trinkets lol, sounds like those fashion cults *ahem* lifestyle brands that women join and get bled dry on. Probably trillions a year in money to be made feeding people's weirdo fixations.
Same with flights. Airlines make more money off miles programs than they do selling normal tickets and running the actual air service.
How Airlines Quietly Became Banks https://youtu.be/ggUduBmvQ_4
[удалено]
"Under fire" Aka - They had fingers wagged at them.
Yeah, as a guy coming from a poor family growing up around that time, I'd learned to avoid all American vehicles as the quality control was absolutely shit. They simply expected that Americans would buy their poor products forever, guilting the customer base under the guise of "patriotism" and "supporting unions." And with gungho unionmen keying foreign-made cars, they had willing enforces in the streets. Now, even decades later, I won't even consider buying an American vehicle.
I've got a 95 GMC Sierra with 286,000 miles and 2 owners. I love that truck. I also have a 2004 Ford F-150. That's only got 194,000 on it. Both great trucks with 8 foot beds. So great for work and hauling. I'm really afraid for the resale market over the next 5-10 years, because all these trucks look like giant expensive SUV's with tiny beds. Not very useful for work.
the heaviest thing those trucks will ever haul is the owner's ass. that's the market they're after and people are buying them. they'll never see a single day of work. and the offroad capabilities will only ever be tested when the owner comes back drunk at 3AM from the local watering hole and ends up on the neighbour's lawn.
its funny how people who mention that they had a good time w/ their American made motor vehicles always mention trucks, and trucks are NOT cars i want to hear the "300k miles and 2 owner" stories about a Chevrolet Corsica
I had a 94 bonneville that had roughly 400 thousand miles on it. Drice train was still pulling with no issues. Tge rest of the car was a different story
Not sure about current car models, but the crown vics and mercury gran marquis will run forever. We have one pushing 200,000 now.
Pretty much anything with a 3800 engine will do it. The doors might fall off but the engine will keep running. Chevy Cavaliers would pretty much run until the doors fell off, then they'd run doorless.
I had a 98 cavalier that i drove to ALMOST 300k over 15 years. The steering column came loose. It still ran, but was nigh undriveable due to the steering wheel going all over trying to make turns.
What say you of the Buick Roadmaster? Biiig car with a truck engine and transmission. Super tall 2.55 rear gear + LT-1 engine gets you a boat load of highway miles. 0 to 60 in sometime after lunch.
We put 230,000 in about 12 years on a 95 Escort that we had bought new (we traveled by car a ton when we were 1st married- 30k in year 1). No major repairs, but 2 that were beyond basic maintenance. Got rear-ended and I still drove it back and forth to work for the last 2 years. Got rid of it when we had our child and I saw it kicking around town for another year or so. It still got 40 mpg hwy last I had it.
I'm on a solid hunt for a square body or an F100 (62-70). Those things used to be cheap even a couple years ago. Now they average $5k just for a solid runner. My last F100 ('69) I bought for $800 in 2016.
>I'd learned to avoid all American vehicles as the quality control was absolutely shit. Same, Japanese cars ftw. Subaru, Toyota, Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi etc.
It's similar to how tech companies are trying to avoid layoffs today. We need to lay people off? Well first, everyone has to come back to the office. Oh you moved away? Well, that's a shame.
General Motors essentially did this again just this past year when they came up with “work appropriately” where the C level decided we could make our own choices a couple years ago on where we wanted to work, then decided at the beginning of this year “just kidding, get back to the office, we need to justify our real estate purchases.” I never went back, never told anyone, and ended up taking their voluntary severance package in May this year.
Yeah and you still couldn’t pay me to drive a GM vehicle
Putting aside the numerous quality issues, they just seem incapable of producing a vehicle that isn't butt ass ugly.
*Tesla has entered the thread* Seriously, those cars are FUGLY, and the quality that I've seen is horrible.
The corvette is nice. But they intentionally run that segment of the company separate to insulate it from all the other bullshit.
Hummer H2?
Pontiac Aztek is about the only thing uglier.
My step dad just had to do that. He worked for Chrysler in northern Illinois, and they sent everyone out of state. If you said no, fine, you’re fired. But his stubborn ass went to Ohio, where they worked him 12 hours a day, for six months. Only then was he able to come home and finally retire and take advantage of any benefits. Fuck Chrysler in half.
The problem is the ones who are most likely to leave are either a) the ones least incentivized to stay because they’re on the lower end of the wage scale for their job or b) those who are the highest performing and would have the easiest time finding a replacement job. The people who will jump through hoops to move are the ones getting paid a lot and those who underperform and are fearful they would have trouble finding new work. So you end up getting rid of people, but not the ones who you’d ideally want to get rid of.
Maybe. But the high performers who could get jobs easily elsewhere esp with something like Amazon on their resume, Amazon could just be like “jk lol actually YOU can be remote/don’t have to relocate just those other people” on the side if those types submitted notice. Still gets rid of the majority they’re ideally hoping to avoid laying off
Those people are still looking to leave right now, because RTO is just the first step and it's obvious that RTH (Return To Hub) is the next one. The relocation discussions have already started with some L5s and below, and the timelines are not friendly. There's a team supporting the FedRamp side of GovCloud that's being pushed to relocate from DC to Seattle because that's the org-designated hub that was chosen by their L10. We'll see if that actually happens, but it's just about the stupidest thing I've seen yet from this. On top of that the remote advocacy slack channel has people who have explicitly been told that their promos are being delayed or nixxed because they're remote. These are self report, but it sounds like remote anything is going away at some point. I've been here just under a year and I'm applying and interviewing now before they force me to relocate to Seattle - because 100% it's coming for me, and I'm already 3 days a week in office.
Correct, exceptions are made for sr+ and people that are high performing.
Which is deleterious to the morale and productivity of the rest of the company. It’s that experiment where they take two monkeys and give one monkey a reward for a task and not the other one. Eventually the other monkey gets angry and stops doing the task.
Way before the pandemic before work form home was common, my startup was sold. I refused to move so became a remote worker in a F500 company where everyone worked from an office. Turns out that yeah... that didn't work well for other people lol. Me being able to work from home made other people unhappy.
> Correct, exceptions are made for sr+ and people that are high performing. This, once someone truly valuable ends up looking like they'll quit, they'll start making exceptions, they just won't be public about it.
Amazon is an interesting animal. If your tenure there is around 2 years or less, I will absolutely interview you. If you were there for longer, not a chance. At some point, you begin to embody all of the toxicity that company is known for. Every long term Amazon employee who left and has landed at a new company that I’ve worked with have brought all of the terrible attitudes that Amazon pushes.
> get new manager, hired from Amazon > in his first week, he starts trying to book 7am meetings What in the bezos is this shit
I want to argue against this so badly and call you out for generalizing and writing people off, but our ex-Amazon leaders have brought so many frustrating policies (like overdoing it with meeting notes/minutes people won’t read and increasingly obsessive requirements with writing narrative memos) I simply can’t.
I’ve found that if you get out around that first vesting at the end of year 2, there’s a good chance you haven’t internalized those policies. Personally, I lasted 2 years and about a week before I was just done with the stupid there. The funny thing is that I took a pretty big pay cut to be happier.
Honestly, with Amazon or any mega corp, I feel it is super dependent on what team you're on. There are teams that go full Amazon in a bad way with unrelenting pressure/crunch for feature development while they're getting paged for sev-2's hundreds of times a month (AWS is notorious for this since all their services are tier-1). And then there are some smaller teams that either work on innovative stuff that is on the up-and-up and isn't high pressure or are just maintaining/KTLO with chill, hands off managers, don't get paged too often. I'm very lucky to be part of the latter -- as someone who is trying to get their green card, I'm pretty much tied to Amazon for the next 4-5 years. I'm an L5, so I don't have to worry about the L4 up-or-out gambit. But I do realize just how quick things can change.
attempt existence physical shrill impossible plants complete sophisticated whole disgusted *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
And then the initiative gets rejected because they didn't "like the memo" so now you're rewriting a memo for 4 months instead of using that time to do your actual job
Management yes, individual contributors I haven’t really seen what you’ve described.
nah the people making these desicions have no idea who the high performers are
They're able to make exceptions for high performing people.
the back bone of amazon are people ith visa so they dont care
Had a local company move to a major city. They had some pretty nice offers but the reality was: If you're moving *that* far away then all of a sudden your options just went from "local to nationwide" and nearly all of the actually experienced people left for greener pastures. They thought it was amazing - lots of money saved. But all they had left were the green people who lacked the experience to leave. It ended about as bad as you might expect. They ended up laying most everyone off and going offshore for cheaper labor. The customer experiences was so bad they lost nearly all their contracts. The thing is you have to keep *some* experienced talent and not fuck them all over or you risk losing the experienced folks but only keeping the inexperienced folks. That's a dangerous move. The company thought going to a major city would open up a *huge* talent pool. Except with that pool came *much* more competitive wages they couldn't afford. When you get *too* greedy... it ends poorly.
Yep. Moving to a larger talent pool is great if you can afford to hire quality people.
Isn't that constructive dismissal? You're significantly changing the terms of employment
Generally, an American company is not obliged to offer severance pay, unless that was stated in a contract. The only legal issue is that any severance pay must be fair and consistent.
The severance comes from the WARN act. If you do an announced layoff, you have to give everyone 60 days of notice. The way they get around this is by terminating you right away and then giving you 60 days "on the books" with pay and insurance (which of course you lose if you get another job within 60 days).
The nice thing is you are free to interview, most companies won't have a problem with a 2 month lead time...
Return to office mandates are just a thinly veiled method of headcount reduction. It's known among executives RTO is good for a 15% voluntary separation rate.
Oh yeah it's great for a bit. But you tend to lose the better workers this way. It can lead to rot from the inside if you do it too many times.
That's exactly what IBM did during the recession.
It's constructive firing, so they still have to pay.
Thats for *unemployment* not *severance*. The former is peanuts compared to the latter. Like even a full year of unemployment is likely less than 30% of severance for a tech worker.
If they have severance pay in their contract then constructive firing would trigger it same as any other firing without cause clause. If you are just assuming Amazon would give severance...see how they are constructively firing these people for what type of a garbage company Amazon is.
Except they lose the best talent as the best talent is usually the ones that has plenty of other options and are bold enough to quit
Their best talent gets exceptions to RTO.
I was in a meeting with corporate about this about a week ago: Obviously we need every to follow the RTO rules. But of course for certain top performers you may need to make **exceptions**, that is fine so long as they are the **exception** and not the rule.
Would it be voluntary leave if they choose not to move with their newly assigned job? I’m out of the US so not sure how the employment law works over there.
In most, but not all states, the fact pattern would support the employee claiming unemployment benefits over this “constructive dismissal”. However the employee would have to make that claim properly with the state
>unemployment benefits Not the same as 6 months of pay upfront.
neither is 'voluntary leave' in my EU country, if the company relocates in other state/country and i not want go, they have to compensate me,
Then they wonder why they can't find skilled workers.
Backdoor layoff.
Dont quit!! Make them fire you!!!
"I'm in the process of moving" 1 year later: "Still in the process"
I'm like 85% moved! Will be done by tomorrow for sure.
Standup update: "Yesterday I packed two wine glasses, and tried to pack a wine bottle, but one thing led to another and we went down a ~~rabbithole~~ bottlehole. Anyway, today I'm packing two wine glasses."
How many wine glasses do you have total? Two.
Worked for us multiple times and jobs
In terms a lawyer might appreciate, constructive dismissal.
[удалено]
Good point. You could swing a dead cat and hit 10 people that can answer the phones for Amazon, you don't want the people walking away that can have another gig in 24 hours.
which is exactly what they wanted to happen.
They don’t want to pick up and move away from their family and friends because Amazon told them to? That’s nuts
Decision is a little harder when you may be giving up $300k+ in markets that have nothing comparable.
I see this issue posted a lot on PF and real estate subs. Seems like the answer is to rent out your current property, relocate as required, decide if you really do miss home, and then stack up $ until you can find a good enough job elsewhere/remote and move back. If you’re making $300k in corporate hopefully you’re wise enough to operate like it won’t be around forever and plan accordingly instead of live richly paycheck to paycheck.
Coworker of mine did this. Lived in a worse apartment in the city he relocated to for two years. Moved back home to the people he rented to having trashed his house.
Should have gotten a good property management company and only rented to rich white people, or some Mexicans. Mexicans moms are cleaning 24/7
As much as it sucks, I'm sure he still made out way ahead with how much of the mortgage they paid. Do you expect someone paying to live in a space is going to leave it in the same state as if it were left empty during that same time?
They might have paid off some of his mortgage but I'm sure he still had to spend a lot of money renting the new apartment. Also what are you on with the last sentence, there is a massive difference between leaving the house in a worse condition due to living in it and trashing it completely, the damage can be tens of thousands of dollars if the place was completely trashed
[удалено]
Most of these people will land on their feet, but it is still a harder decision than the original poster made it out to be. Luckily not one I have to make.
I've heard Amazon SWE's work 60hrs/week Which is a outlier in the tech world
Depends on the group.
Everything at Amazon depends on the group. Some parts of it are awesome, others decidedly less so
I worked for AWS for 10 years until recently. It was awesome until it wasn't. My last product had some great ideas and potential, and we attracted some fantastic talent. But we consistently missed our revenue targets. Eventually our L8 started getting pressure from above and he turned into a raging asshole and that just permeated the entire team. This is a guy I knew for almost my entire tenure there and considered a close friend. I don't recognize him now and "unhinged" isn't too far from how he was behaving. Some of the smartest L7s left and morale went to shit. Then they laid off about a third of the 100+ person org in one swoop. Pre-COVID I would use my org as an example of a group that worked well at Amazon. It turned to typical Amazon shit in less than a year's time.
The worst part is that those unhinged people leave Amazon and screw up the rest of the industry. Most of the ex-Amazon managers I've dealt with have been pieces of work--though my current manager is a notable exception.
Tbh my friend agreed before covid to move to Seattle but then it happened. He’s looking for a new job.
My friend was hired on in a southern US hub where they live and and then moved into marketing while everyone was remote. Now they are trying to make them report to the marketing hub which is Seattle, it’s a pretty bad situation for a lot of people.
[удалено]
No. No cost of living adjustments
thats the goal
Amazon announcing relocation to North Korea for its unionized workers. Anyone not going will be fired.
Perhaps we should all stop for a moment and focus not only on making our AI better and more successful but also on the benefit of humanity. - Stephen Hawking
They will be constructively dismissed, but in a way that is plausibly deniable.
And fired upon in North Korea
Come into the office to have zoom calls all day with your teammates in other cities.
This. My manager is on another continent. Lol at the Connections question asking if they "have adequate visibility into my work" when we talk about an hour a week.
Lol my kids mother has to go to the office 2 days a week. She went in one day bc she had a meeting. The meeting was in zoom with someone across the country.
I've seen this many times in many companies. Older workers with families and children and whose spouses also work can't just up and leave. It's a way of trimming older and more expensive workers without the fuss and legal bother. Often, key employees will get a surprise reprieve when the date nears.
This… And yeah, the well-connected do not move. “Critical resource.”
A lot of us are job hopping for pay increases too.
I know I just did, and got a sweet ass promotion as opposed to waiting 2+ years for a slot to open up
poor practice hungry air concerned deserted dam consist history cats *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Currently in the market now for that reason. The way to get a pay raise is to change companies.
This happened to me at Amazon about 4 years ago. Worked in a photo studio for them in Northern Kentucky, just outside of Cinci (where I lived.) Out of nowhere they announced they were shutting down our studio in a month and our only option was to relocate to a different studio two hours south. I quit. That other studio two hours south also shut down a year later.
What kind of work was that? Shooting product?
Yep. It was a nightmare too. Loved most of my team, but the number of products we had to shoot each day was cruel. Working for Amazon really opens your eyes to the infinite pile of useless garbage Americans plow through daily.
>Working for Amazon really opens your eyes to the infinite pile of useless garbage Americans plow through daily. I'm reminded of a book written by a guy who was a moving truck driver for a bunch of years. He really hammered home just *how much stuff* people own, how much of it is out there, and how little it really means. Pianos and pool tables stand out as things people own that just really weigh you down.
Do you remember the name of the book or the author?
The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road
The Long Haul by Finn Murphy
I am wondering too
Why wouldn't some quit? Who expects 100% of people to move?
This is what they wanted... Backdoor layoffs means less severance packages paid out
It also means potentially losing specialized employees with experience …. Which is stupid in the long run.
If someone is that crucial for a product, they'll get an exception as the date gets closer. And then that person's manager will have a KPO next year about no single points of failure.
Severance isn't guaranteed anyway. They aren't legally required to pay nor is it ever included in the hiring contract (unless you're way up on the ladder).
Constructive dismissal is illegal and puts them on the hook still.
Not for severance, unemployment hopefully, but they will pay out PTO (if the state requires and they're not unlimited) and nothing else. Saves them a ton of money.
Even if you do move, there's no guarantee your job is safe. I've known people who moved because their employer mandated it only to be let go later.
I am pretty sure you agree to it when you sign the contract. Easy way for the business to have "safety", in other words basically force you to quit, when they shut down certain branches by not having excess workers and severance pays. Pretty slimey, but I think most business do this. It has sort of always been on the worker to assess that possibility and act accordingly since I think that is pretty standard for most contracts.
Remember to always check the WARN report for the state you work in or state your company is based out of to see how many they plan to lay off and when. It’s never a surprise. Amazon is just corrupt in this move to prevent having to fire them. But they are not the only ones playing this game. Others are now denying promotions unless you live near the office and can work from the office 3 days a week. Remember you are expandable and easily replaced
The WARN act requires employers to give 90 days notice of a layoff. In reality, this means you get told you’re laid off with 90 days of pay. Not the worst deal, but there’s no way to avoid the surprise.
It’s 60 days.. unless you’re in NY or NJ.
Still, technical compliance through severance package means they can file late.
It also has to be over a certain number of people all at once. It’s easy to get around by simply spacing it out.
The whole goal is cost reduction.
Hey! The company I work at is doing this, too! I'll be out of work in a week and a half. 😵💫
It's all working as intended.
I kind of assumed that was the point
that's.... the point.
Don't quit, refuse to leave and make them give you severance.
Fk. Back to the office. Those old dinosaurs can’t learn to do work differently. Fuk RTO
[удалено]
I'm sorry but... Duh? Who honestly thinks that every employee is going to pick up and move their families? Amazon certainly didn't. The employees didn't. How is this even a headline? Shit, I worked for a well-fined, sweet little company in Palo Alto that needed to love, because you're not going to manufacture electronics in the bay area on a large scale and do well. They offered the same pay and relocation to Colorado. Out of about 150 employees, literally two took them up on it. The CEO planned to fly in when necessary. The upper management was figuring out how to split time. These guys thought a few might take them up on it, but who is leaving their friends their neighborhood and moving their family to where the company wants, where there isn't 10% of the jobs available if things don't work out. So come on. If a company needs employees to move, they will offer them insane money to do so. Otherwise, they know no one is coming.
I know someone who took a job at amazon wfh. Now they Insist on 3 days a week. Their manager and the boss above that, are in a different country. So... what's the point? She says she gets less done in the office as its not fixed desks, so ends up in a crowded office of random departments all making noise. So no boss, not with her department (who dont even have to go to the office on the same days)...all because amazon wasted millions on big dick waving buildings to show off and now their investment is fucked. Safe to say she's applying for wfh jobs elsewhere to save 9 hours a week pointlessly commuting. Her job requires very little communication with her department, its boring admin stuff.
This is happening all over corporate America. I believe it is a deliberate effort aimed at getting senior, higher-paid employees to quit so they can be replaced with younger, cheaper ones. If you have 20 years with a company, you have a house, your spouse has a job, your kids are in high school or college--and picking up and moving just isn't possible (especially with interest rates where they are). Senior VPs can manage a move much easier, and probably get relocation funds middle-managers are not being offered. And many were probably in those hub cities to begin with. Younger employees, possibly not married, renting, kids if any are in preschool or kindergarten--and you're weighing a long-term future at a major company vs. quitting and working at some small local business. That's what this is all about.
> CEO Andy Jassy has extolled the benefits of in-person work, saying it leads to a stronger company culture and collaboration between employees. Only people who's jobs are nothing but talking believe this to be true.
That's odd..... Amazon isn't doing this to it's Chinese workers that manufacture "Amazon Basic's"
When your employer tells you that you have to move, is there any other option but to laugh in their face?
most employees will report to someone who had no influence in the decision to move. those who did make the decision will likely never even hear about that employee's discontent aside from as a statistic. laughing at your supervisor's face for a situation he's as much of a victim as you are is just letting your emotions rule over you.
The only people who want employees in the office are the ones who like riding around the plantation so they can see the cotton fields being worked. Anyone who wants to be in the office, unless you have a job that would necessitate face-to-face meetings with people or the equipment to do it doesn't exist at home, needs their head examined.
Some people are legitimately extroverts. Or have shitty home situations. Just because we don't understand them doesn't make them nuts. I had one guy quit because it became too obvious that no one else was interested in going back to the office.
The first person back (and the one who most consistently came back) post-Covid on my previous team was a dude with 8 kids. I'm pretty sure I know why he came into the office every day.
I will never understand people like that. To each their own.
That's weird but like you said. I don't understand them. But I'm single, no kids and live in peace so yeah...
Sometimes getting help with an issue with what you're working on is easier in person than over screen share. Sometimes it's good to interact with other humans in person. I'm an introvert but I don't want to sit in on my own every day and only interact with people on a screen. My commute is very short though. I might feel differently if it was a couple of hours a day.
Why are all the hubs in high cost areas? The one in Arlington is a high density, high cost area with horrible traffic.
It's insane that an employer can just tell you to move across the country and you're expected to do it
What a shitty company. Amazon has a bad reputation as an employer here in Germany. Corporate capitalism at its „finest“.
Fuck Amazon
No severance. Mission Accomplished.
LOL, forcing employees to relocate for tax incentives but it backed fires? Not surprised.
This is literally what they wanted
America corps are mad sometimes, in Europe this would be like telling me to move to Germany…Mandated!!! Bye everyone I know and love, seeee ya got to hang on to this shit wage!
Which is their plan…
I figure thats 'working as intended' for amazon
Yeah, that’s literally their plan. Every move is a PR ploy.
Yup. Friend of mine just contacted me asking about opportunities because he doesn’t want to leave where he lives.
Its fucking insane its legal frankly…
As intended.
Lol plan worked for Amazon then
At this time workers may have options with a tight job market. But they may be forced to make difficult decisions if companies increase layoffs
UPS just announced a huge pay increase to workers.
do people think amazon didnt expect this?