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Amazon cuts 16k jobs

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#241

Post by BobaFloutist »

profdevloper wrote: post #178
x0x0 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as visa holders are desperate That is the point of most of these programs. If we (as a country) do h1b, those people should be on an automatic path to a green card.

Why? They are obviously being weaponized to suppress wages for native Americans in an environment where tech leaders were saying "learn to code". I think the H1B needs to be cancelled and companies should incur financial penalties for using foreign labor to undercut American workers.

>native Americans I know you don't mean indigenous people, so what's the cutoff?

Is it birthright citizenship? But then what about naturalized citizens? And if they count, thennare they screwing over "natives" up and until their swearing in when they instantly join the screwed, or is it more of a continuous spectrum of screwer/screwed? Or, in the other direction, does your family need to have been here a couple of generations for you to count?

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#242

Post by malfist »

MonkeyClub wrote: post #133
tchalla wrote: post #97

Interesting perspective of an L7 who was laid off at Amazon https://xcancel.com/PlumbNick/status/2016500347053773198

> I saw this coming and that’s why I’m running for Congress. Well, that's one way to go for that next job.

Be the change you want to see in the world. Honestly, it'd be good to have passionate congressfolk who aren't overtly corrupt or beholden to corporate interests

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#243

Post by nxm »

shartshooter wrote: post #144

This summer I went camping and at the campground next to me was a middle manager at Amazon. I’ve been out of the workforce for about a year, so I asked him how much of an impact AI was having in his role. He told me that he had worked to develop a tool that would replace effectively all of the middle management function that he was responsible for: gathering information from folks below him, distilling it down and re…

Actual effective managers do much more than "gathering information from folks below him, distilling it down and reporting that to people above him."

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#244

Post by paxys »

tchalla wrote: post #97

Interesting perspective of an L7 who was laid off at Amazon https://xcancel.com/PlumbNick/status/2016500347053773198

He is right, but what I don't see in the post is a solution.

How do you stop multinational companies like Amazon from using the global talent pool as they see fit and pay whatever wages the local market will bear?

Without that it comes off as the standard "elect me because foreigners are bad".

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#245

Post by SoftTalker »

jgbuddy wrote: post #189
paganel wrote: post #119

One thing I don't understand when it comes to these big data-center investments in India is what will they do when the water runs out? Because I do not think that this is environmentally sustainable.

Water consumption is not what the headlines lead you to believe- using water for cooling doesn't "consume" the water

Looping water through a closed heat exchanger doesn't consume the water, but using water to evaporatively cool a condenser in an industrial chiller does.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#246

Post by sejje »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #75
sejje wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's very very easy to make stocks go up. Zimbabwe and Venezuela have stock markets that have gone up millions of times over for instance. The stock market is mostly just an inverse of currency health and tends to be inline or slightly above inflation on average, even when the economy is a complete mess. No one ever judges economic health by the stock market which you seem to be doing. You judge it be things like med…

> No one ever judges economic health by the stock market which you seem to be doing

On the news stations they do, and it was a bunch of FUD about the stock markets tanking.

Tesla, too. "Look what he's done to his brand, let's hit him in the wallet" blah blah.

That was while things were in a downtrend. It was going to be the biggest recession ever, Trump was so stupid he couldn't possibly understand the ramifications, etc.

Then it just never happened. Things went up.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#247

Post by reactordev »

klipt wrote: post #150
y-curious wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess we just need the other shoe to drop: punish companies that are based in the US and outsource to India. It’ll happen in time if this trend continues

Then the US companies will be outcompeted by more competitive companies located outside the US. Now the US lost the jobs and the workers' income tax and the corporate tax. America cannot eternally capture a disproportionate share of global wealth, even with such rent seeking moves. It's unsustainable. We had a golden age after WW2 when we were the only undamaged industrial economy but that age has ended.

No, I think companies that want to stay competitive will leave the US.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#248

Post by heliumtera »

ryandrake wrote: post #159
SoftTalker wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people at my office who haven't really done anything since March 2020 when we all got sent home. They probably weren't doing anything before then either, but at least they were there eight hours a day.

I've never understood this meme. Maybe I'm naive, but why would a company hire someone to "not do anything?" How would they stay employed if their performance review showed they "weren't doing anything?" Everyone around me is busy doing 3x the amount of work they can sustain because we're so short staffed. Where are these companies that have people just sitting there picking their nose watching YouTube? I've never re…

Headcount increase means growth which means stock go up which means short term profit at the expense of long term quality of product or service. Soooo many people doing absolutely nothing and really no one cares. It is beneficial to have someone doing nothing as oppose to someone pro active, because doing things breaks things. Think about, companies optimize for inertia. Extraordinary levels of burocracy, governance, quality assurance...at some point it becomes impossible to move. Measures are in place not because they increase quality, but they reduce movement, and then this is perceived as safer. Think about it, less movement == safe. People doing absolutely fucking nothing while virtue signaling is a perfect fit.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#249

Post by khazhoux »

ericmcer wrote: post #186
tchalla wrote: post #97

Interesting perspective of an L7 who was laid off at Amazon https://xcancel.com/PlumbNick/status/2016500347053773198

"moved wherever the company needed me and fixed problems that had been sitting untouched because no one else could untangle them." A screenshot later on shows he was a manager who spent his entire career in Houston. So... he didn't move and I associate "untangling difficult problems" as something an engineer should brag about not a manager. Reads like AI generated slop that doesn't correlate with the actual situation…

I took “moved wherever the company needed me” as hopping from troubled project to project to help fix. This is often what the most senior engineers do, and also the Manager label doesn’t necessarily mean much in this context.

Not AI.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#250

Post by seinvak »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #2

AI is just the disguise. It's the economy, just like it is in every recession.

AI is definitely a solid reason. Even a 10% increase in developer efficiency translates to roughly 9% fewer workers needed to do the same job. For AI to be cost effective, it must reduce headcount.
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