A thunderstorm at the beginning of the year! The various aspects of Amazon's operations

As the saying goes, some are happy while others are sad. While some operations have already received generous year-end bonuses and are happily preparing for the New Year, there is another group of workers whose jobs are in jeopardy.

As 2025 slowly approaches , many Amazon operations are in confusion.

The year started with a thunderstorm, and the operation collapsed

There are less than 20 days until the Chinese New Year. I think most workers are thinking of celebrating the Chinese New Year first and then thinking about everything else. However, some operators said that they may not be able to celebrate the Chinese New Year this year. What's going on?

According to feedback from Xiaoyu (pseudonym), an Amazon operator, he was inexplicably burdened with a huge "debt" because the store he was responsible for was suddenly wiped out. It can be said that it was a big blow to the start of the year.

According to Xiaoyu's description, he has been working in his current company since 2021. He has been working diligently and responsibly for many years, and his performance is impeccable, basically achieving a 100% growth rate every year. Xiaoyu believes that he owes nothing to the company.

In the third year of employment, Xiaoyu was successfully promoted to team leader, started to lead new people, and was responsible for the overall performance of the team. However, according to Xiaoyu, the promotion to team leader was purely a title, and the company did not give him a salary increase.

Xiaoyu actually didn’t care about not getting a salary increase. What really disappointed him was the company’s attitude towards him when problems arose. At the beginning of this year, Xiaoyu found that the link he was responsible for was suddenly swept due to product safety issues. Amazon required that the inventory of all ASINs under the link be cleared before restoring the link. It was initially estimated that there were more than 1,000 items in inventory, and the cost might be tens of thousands of yuan.

After quickly reporting to the leader, the company decided to clear the inventory through cooperation with overseas warehouses, and make plans for the future after the connection is restored. But what Xiaoyu didn't expect was that the company asked him to bear this part of the expenses. Xiaoyu couldn't accept this decision.

"I didn't do anything illegal, and it wasn't my decision that the link was suddenly scanned. How can an ordinary operator like me afford such a huge expense?" Xiaoyu complained helplessly.

However, the company ignored Xiaoyu's protest and decided to directly include the fee in the profit of the store that Xiaoyu was responsible for. This way, Xiaoyu had no room to resist.

Faced with such a result, Xiaoyu said frankly that he was ready to resign and planned to move from the inland to the coastal areas, where there should be more opportunities.

But judging from the current employment environment, changing jobs rashly may not be the best option, especially for "older" operators.

Are there still advantages for an “older” operations manager to change jobs?

Mandy, born in 1995, has been working in Amazon operations in Shenzhen for 7 years. Her first company was a startup, and the daily work intensity was relatively high. She often had to work overtime or even all night. Mandy couldn't stand it anymore and chose to resign.

The second company was also small, and there were no mature links or stores when I joined, so I had to do pioneering work. After several years of hard work, Mandy's annual sales reached US$6 million at its highest, with a gross profit of 18%.

Now Mandy has basically become an all-round player in the Amazon field. Except for product development work where she only knows theoretical knowledge, Mandy claims that she can handle all other work, including registering stores, formulating inventory of incoming and outgoing goods, daily operations and handling various emergencies.

In terms of salary, Mandy said that she was originally quite satisfied, but since the previous product developer left, the products provided by the new developer are not so good. When promoting new products, she can only rely on advertising and low-price traffic, which makes the profit very ugly, and the commission is naturally affected.

As the end of the year approaches, Mandy is considering looking outside for better opportunities, but she is worried that she will be "discriminated against" by the company because of her age and being unmarried and childless.

Industry insiders analyzed that Mandy’s problem could not be solved by changing companies. First of all, Mandy said that she started out as a pioneer, but because she changed product development, her profits dropped sharply, which inevitably made people question her operational capabilities.

Secondly, it is an indisputable fact that the overall environment has become more competitive. Even if you find a company with so-called good products, you may face a situation where there are sales but no profits.

Most importantly, Mandy needs to correctly evaluate and analyze her own operational capabilities, go to the recruitment market to understand the situation, and then decide on her next plan.

"In the new year, I plan to talk to my boss about a pay raise"

Amazon operations manager Zhang Yi (pseudonym) worked in a small company for more than two years, and basically built the store from scratch.

Now, many links under the store have reached the top of the category. Last year, the gross profit was more than 3 million, and the gross profit margin was about 12%.

Regarding the plan for 2025, except for the product side that cannot be controlled by herself, Zhang Yi plans to further reduce the cost of each link, such as optimizing the proportion of advertising and improving performance.

Zhang Yi thought that she had done everything within her ability and her performance was better than that of her colleagues of the same period or even with more experience, so she planned to ask for a salary increase.

In fact, because the base salary and commission were very low when she first joined the company, Zhang Yi already had the successful experience of asking for a salary increase last year. This time she plans to go a step further and hopes to get a commission of about 10% of the gross profit. She posted her idea online, hoping to get more opinions from people in the industry.

However, Zhang Yi did not seem to get a satisfactory answer. Many netizens said that her salary level was already very good in the local area, and the normal commission standard in the industry was about 3-5 points.

Some netizens also bluntly stated that there is no point in discussing only the suggestions without mentioning the resources provided by the company. If you want to know your own value, just go out and start your own business and you will know.

Although she didn't get the answer she wanted, Zhang Yi gained a more intuitive understanding of her own salary and the overall salary average in the industry.

In addition to them, there are many more operators who are also experiencing their own stories and New Year plans. You are welcome to leave a message below to discuss.

Amazon

operations

2025