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Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

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Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#361

Post by shagie »

CydeWeys wrote: post #348
shagie wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

??? was "monetize skills" to which they could take a cut of it. The problem was that it was rather difficult to do for a while and the "here's a great ecosystem of games and tools" never materialized for echo devices. Part of that is that people really don't know how to to do voice interfaces well. Another part is that it has to run on AWS which has all the AWS sizing and billing problems that need to be solved by pr…

> Part of that is that people really don't know how to to do voice interfaces well. Maybe that'll change now with ChatGPT. The problem I have with voice interfaces is you need something at the level of AGI to make it compelling. I could have an hours-long engaging voice-only conversation with a real person, but what the hell am I going to do with a dumb "smart" speaker that will be even a fraction as engaging as, say…

I believe that GPT is an enormous step forward for the voice interface. My favorite example is to give a csv of hourly weather data and it comes back with a human-esque interpretation of it. Not just the rules engine approach that you get from websites...

    Summarize the following weather forecast for tomorrow
    
    12 am, 2° F, clear, 15 mph
    1 am, 2° F, clear, 15 mph
    2 am, 1° F, clear, 14 mph

    Tomorrow's forecast will be cold and clear with temperatures dropping from 2°F to 1°F and winds of around 15mph decreasing to 14mph.
That's a small token example - give it the full 24h and its right on.

Give it the proper data in a machine reasonable format and as it to make it into a human summary, and that's where its strength appears to be.

The problem is that GPT would be too expensive for Amazon Alexa right now.

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#362

Post by chillel »

jdminhbg wrote: post #261
CoastalCoder wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Yes, I totally agree. The whisper quiet vans driving safely and unhurriedly up and down the street where my kids play are a much better solution. I hope that your plans to legislate the status quo into permanence are successful.

the Rivian EDV is very quiet ;)

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#364

Post by rob74 »

shigawire wrote: post #159
peruvian wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's crazy to think but people do drink the kool-aid, despite history.

Some companies operate differently too. Obviously they still watch the bottom line, but some aren't as reactionary and are willing to take more pain to keep employees because they understand the value of that goodwill. More commonly private companies with a strong-willed founder/leader.

I don't even think "pain to keep employees" is the right word here - Amazon for instance is still highly profitable, it's just that the profits went down a bit (which is to be expected if the economy is worse). But they're still laying off people just to make the bottom line look even better...

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#365

Post by ProllyInfamous »

In October, after mentioning to the neighbor plumber friend that massive tech layoffs would be arriving just in time for Christmas, he told me that he did not really care what happens to tech workers because "people will always need a good plumber."

Tonight, same plumber friend told me that his company's workflow has gone from ~50 hrs/wk to 30hrs/wk — and that includes "organizing the company truck." He now understands why everybody should care about (even unrelated-) industry-wide layoffs.

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#366

Post by preordained »

bushbaba wrote: post #68
jjcon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the tech companies are letting a mix of recent hires, corporate middle management and in amazon’s case some logistics warehouse workers and specialty project engineers were let go. It’s a pretty eclectic, diverse group of people so its not as hard as it sounds to reabsorb into other companies. If they were all engineers or all HR there might be issues but in an already over-employed economy already 17k jobs w…

I disagree there’s simply not enough FANG level high paying jobs to fill all these employees into. Many will end up at startups and other industries with a paycut. Few companies are willing to pay a HR or Recruiter 300k/year comp.

I don't understand why you were downvoted. Maybe not optimistic/cheery, sure, but not an outlandish take at all I'd say.

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#367

Post by alephnerd »

midoridensha wrote: post #340
sangnoir wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, a lower-than-replacement birthrate combined with a hostile immigration policy that is against permanency will do that.

> a hostile immigration policy that is against permanency will do that. Why are you spreading lies? Permanent residency is really, really easy to get in Japan, unlike the US where you have to win a lottery.

Wages for SWEs are lower than other comparable countries in Europe, Canada, and APAC (SG, AU, NZ) and Japanese fluency (not a PR requirement but still needed to live in Japan) is hard to acquire. Why deal with the headache of learning a hard to learn language not spoken outside of a handful of islands in the Northern Pacific with a very insular culture when you can become a German or Canadian national for much less effort.

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#368

Post by esperent »

shigawire wrote: post #159
peruvian wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's crazy to think but people do drink the kool-aid, despite history.

Some companies operate differently too. Obviously they still watch the bottom line, but some aren't as reactionary and are willing to take more pain to keep employees because they understand the value of that goodwill. More commonly private companies with a strong-willed founder/leader.

> Some companies operate differently too.

Can you give some examples? Of big companies with more than a few thousand employees I mean.

Personally I'm doubtful that they exist.

Re: Amazon to Lay Off over 17,000 Workers, More Than First Planned

#369

Post by zxcvbn4038 »

agentultra wrote: post #357
zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never understood the people who make no effort to better themselves - they work in technology, everything has a 3-5 year engineering life, they should always be preparing for the next thing. People often can’t control what technologies their employer uses, but if they have solid fundamentals and I can tell they have tried to learn things on their own, more often then not I’ll give them a chance, and it usually w…

How excellent do you want to be at generic enterprise CRUD apps? Somebody has to build and maintain them. Have you considered that maybe they’re fine with their level of responsibility and can leave work at the office?

That is usually the part where I shake their hands and wish them luck in their next endeavor.

If they are not there because they love working with technology, there are other places for them to be.

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