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Amazon cuts 16k jobs

reuters.com

251–260 of 1001 posts

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#251
you always hear about a stream of layoffs but It doesn't give the full picture. what i'm more interested in is what is their total employee count over time. that represents the net hiring net lay offs, is what counts at the end of the day

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#252
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's fiat wealth so... write the ledger however. The majority don't care so long as they have enough food and shelter and healthcare. The whole scoreboard based on bank accounts is all made up wankeroo. Let's just have AI avatars fight for gloating rights; Goku beat Superman on PPV so Japan gets to host the inter dimensional cable world cup! And otherwise keep the biologically essential logistics flowing cause that c…

> It's fiat wealth so... write the ledger however

I'd like to see a serious study about the word "fiat" and whether it has been used to make a single valid economic argument in the last 30 years (auto maker excluded)

Just kidding, I know it has not.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#253
post #90
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not american, but it seems to me there are enough american job seekers in CS to justify not needing H1B. I'm not sure anyway what is the relationship between the potential difficulty of hiring new folks, and firing current folks in USA to offshore roles, are relates.

There's not a surplus of American developers that can pass interview loops at top tech employers.

Ok, then hire them on an O-1 visa. H1B is the problem as it creates a indentured servitude class that is going to work for less.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once again the mask of "AI" is really just human labor underneath. I've personally seen founders raise millions of dollars because of "AI" that is really just manual labor. I know, I wrote the code that enabled the manual laborers. This was like 10 years ago; the lie is even easier to tell now. And that is so so important in an economy where gaining favor from those who already have money is far better than just sell…

The AI of ten years ago is not the AI of now...

But the scam is still the same.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#255
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A reasonable correction. Apparently 25% of Amazon employees are in corporate or AWS[0]. So they're both roughly 4% layoffs. 0: https://redstagfulfillment.com/how-many-people-work-for-amaz...

Amazon has 150k in India alone, presumably corporate? So now you are looking at closer to 7%.

Who said employees in India are unaffected by these layoffs?

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#256
post #97

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

It certainly looks like AI slop, so I stopped reading pretty fast.

It’s pretty sad that when people write well now, others dismiss it as AI.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#257
post #157
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not american, but it seems to me there are enough american job seekers in CS to justify not needing H1B. I'm not sure anyway what is the relationship between the potential difficulty of hiring new folks, and firing current folks in USA to offshore roles, are relates.

> there are enough american job seekers in CS To be blunt: Not enough qualified ones. Look at the names of all the top AI papers of the past 3 years, not too many are American. When you get bullied in American public schools for being a "nerd" and liking science and math, your country doesn't exactly produce a lot of state-of-the-art STEM professionals. You get a small handful of exceptional people who overcame the a…

Sorry man, American raised autists beat chinese 996 every day of the week. shrug.

I mean that in the cultural sense, not racially. ABC autists are S tier too.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#258
post #107
post #97

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

is it me or is this ai slop

I am doomed, I guess. I didn't detect that. I thought this was sincere expression from an actual person, but an actual person who is also running for office and thus needs to tweak his writing accordingly.

Although I did note that it was a bit long (I guess I am out of the loop on tweets as well. I thought tweets were supposed to be short "hot takes". But this is practically an essay).

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#259
post #150

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.

Conveniently India and the EU just signed a major trade deal.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#260
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize it’s easy to pattern-match this news to 'hiring in India vs. firing in US' given the current climate, but having worked at Amazon India for 4 years, I can tell you the cuts happen there too. Amazon has a history of annual restructuring that hits every region. It isn't necessarily a direct relocation strategy so much as their standard operational churn. The 'efficiency' cuts are happening globally, India inc…

Amazon also employs 1.5 million people globally, 350k of which are in corporate. These 16k were corporate. Still sucks for everyone involved, I know a corporate sales guy who got laid off Microsoft and it disrupted his life pretty seriously. As Stalin says one's a tragedy, a millions a statistic.

Since the HN reaction to layoffs almost always is about blaming H1B, here’s a few more things the headline misses:

1. Cuts were global 2. Cuts in US also include H1B employees 3. 16000 roles are corporate roles, not just tech related, H1B program is not generally utilized for those roles 4. Expansion in India is not just tech. Amazon is a big retailer in India. Understandably if you’re seeing revenue growth in India, you will grow corporate presence in India. If Walmart becomes a massive retailer in EU, it will hire EU nationals in EU. That’s not shipping jobs to EU.

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