Amazon cuts 16k jobs • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#261

Post by cmrdporcupine » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 5:28 PM UTC

sejje wrote: post #230

zug_zug wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the talk was significant inflation, because everything will cost more. And it does.

My costs are falling. I buy a lot of groceries for my business, so I have decent records. Beef is way up, though. Gas is way down as well.

Oil prices have fallen. And likely will through the rest of the year. And the US conspicuously didn't apply tariffs on oil from Canada (while simultaneously saying "we don't need anything from Canada" and threatening our sovereignty and tariffing everything else) which is a huge amount of imports into the US.

Oil prices down isn't necessarily a good thing for an oil exporter like the US though. In aggregate.

If the US had actually applied tariffs on Canadian oil your gas pump prices would be up very significantly.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#262

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 5:28 PM UTC

shevy-java wrote: post #131

I am beginning to dislike AI more and more. Though, I think the title is a bit of a misnomer here. In part the axing of jobs was done to reduce costs; now AI also may relate here or be even a main driver, but I think the title oversimplifies it a bit.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#263

Post by nxm » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 5:28 PM UTC

notTooFarGone wrote: post #82

sejje wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Dollar is losing value by the day, gold and silver on record high and somehow this is not an indicator for huge uncertainty? China is beating the US on pretty much every stage and this only accelerates this.

And yet prices are marginally up while all the "economists" expected major inflation. Dollar vs Euro is at same level now as it was in 2019 - there are benefits to the economy as well when the currency is less strong.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#264

Post by stego-tech » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 5:28 PM UTC

Again, I feel like the general comments are missing the forest for the trees by relying on witty quips about AI or retreading (legitimate) outsourcing grievances, instead of actually addressing the root problem on display:

Companies, be they highly profitable global conglomerates like Amazon or smaller Mom and Pop shops, have zero incentive whatsoever to retain staff. None. In fact, they have every incentive to axe as many workers as possible, as often as possible, profit be damned. So long as governments and shareholders reward job cuts with stock price or compensation bumps, this trend will continue.

To simplify: we have built a global society where 99% of people must work to survive but have zero mandates that employers provide jobs with livable wages and benefits. That is, and will remain, the crux of the issue at hand.

I don’t think it’s a controversial idea to impose broad and lenient regulations on companies to prevent this sort of activity. Made a profit last year? No layoffs allowed without a year’s worth of severance and benefits is such an immense deterrent that most employers will find ways to repurpose staff internally rather than fire them for a quick share bump - though with the consequence of slower hiring, as companies don’t want to be burdened with too much unnecessary talent. There are literally hundreds of policy ideas out there that nobody wants to pull because it’d inconvenience Capital, but we’re at a crossroads where we either mandate Capital behave with the barest of minimums of decency and respect for the workforce they mandate exist through Capitalist markets, or we break their arm outright and tax the absolute shit out of them to provide a high quality of life for every worker regardless of present employment.

Right now, they get to keep all the money while outsourcing risks to the workforce, and all that’s done is create shit like this: thousands let go not out of business need, but of business greed.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#265

Post by scottLobster » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 5:28 PM UTC

sejje wrote: post #233

scottLobster wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI investment/datacenter construction was roughly 1% of US GDP in 2025 all by itself. That and people were expecting the tariffs to be consistently applied as stated, instead we got... this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sr7OVWgqDIM&t=27s

So it wasn't what they expected?

You're accusing people of moving the goalposts on the tariff conversation, the goal posts were doing backflips and jazzercise from the day they were announced.

So yeah, the tariffs are still a net negative on the economy, but have been so erratically and poorly implemented that they're not nearly as bad as they could have been. It's like a plastered drunk guy swinging a knife at you. It's a lethal threat, but he's tripping over himself constantly and can barely stand so it's easy to dodge for now. Could be a more serious issue if he ever sobers up.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#266

Post by volkk » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 5:29 PM UTC

tannerc wrote: post #237

volkk wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i've been using AI for as long as GPT has been out, so if you can't see through the rambling, overly complex to make you sound smarter kind of text, as well as the written patterns that are always used ad nauseam like "this thing isn't JUST this, it's THIS" -- i dunno how else to prove it to you. IYKYK.

I have also used GPTs since 2020. I am also a writer. Much of the writing equated with “generated by AI” is so precisely because it’s broadly trained on real writing. So the claim of “AI slop” without proof is little more than heresy. It would be helpful to have any evidence. It’s not about just the writing in one example, it’s about writing patterns—which are common—being equated with AI simply because they’re commo…

if you're a writer, and you're using GPT for so long and you can't see it as obvious, i dunno what to tell you at this point. i guess LLMs are trained particularly on this guy's writing.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#267

Post by wanderr » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 5:29 PM UTC

My hot take is that AI is shaping up to be a tax on big tech.

Yet another round of layoffs being blamed on AI. As with last time, this is not due to productivity gains from AI, rather it's due to wanting to reallocate budget towards investing in AI. (and maybe an excuse for something they already wanted to do)

I think some productivity gains from AI are real, and I've experienced some firsthand, but reductions in force being ENABLED by AI are not, and I don't think we will see much of that for a good while still.

AI is attracting a lot of investment dollars because it's seen as disruptive; the capabilities it potentially unlocks for people are enormous. The problem is that general intelligence is still far away (fundamentally cannot be reached with the current approaches to AI, in my opinion), and the level of investment required is so high that the only way folks are getting that money back is if it does enable a level of layoffs that would be crippling to the economy.

Additionally, there is not a huge difference between the top models, and thanks to the massive investments the models are incrementally improving. It seems obvious from the outside that AI models are going to be a commodity, and good free models put downward pressure on prices, which they are already losing money on. So I think it's going to be a race to the bottom, and is very unlikely to be a winner-takes-all situation.

I think this means that the reward for big tech companies pouring insane amounts of money into AI will be maintaining their current position, or maybe stealing a bit of business from each other. That's why I think AI is more of a tax on big tech than a real investment opportunity.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#268

Post by paxys » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 5:29 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #16

mahmoudhossam wrote: post #5

Alexa, insert David and Victoria Beckham "be honest" meme

What's the real reason for the layoffs?

To lower costs

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#269

Post by johntarter » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 5:29 PM UTC

rune-dev wrote: post #213

cultofmetatron wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Its worse than that. when I lived in america, I found that being a software engineer was a dealbreaker when it came to dating most women. Imagine my surprise going to other countries and finding that my chosen profession made me high value…

As an American this does not match my experience at all. What profession were those women looking for?

Bartenders, starving artists, musicians, and athletes?

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#270

Post by hajile » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 5:30 PM UTC

pram wrote: post #232

hajile wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There haven't been any meaningful attacks on H1b visa. When running for office, Trump said very clearly that H1b was good for his companies (saving money), but bad for the American people. Today, he's claiming that we need H1b because we don't know how to build computer chips (~75% come from India with zero advanced production and another ~12% come from China which is also far behind). His "massive" $100k increase ov…

Sorry but making around $40k in 2015 would not, under any circumstance, require you to live with 6 roommates in Austin. That is EXTREME hyperbole lol My first IT job in Austin in 2010 paid $18 an hour and I had my own apartment and car.

Maybe they wanted to live together to save money (remember, the rest of their family isn't in the US), but that is irrelevant to the fact that they were paid way less than half the going rate in that city (I remember his stated salary being a little over $30k, so I errored on the high side). We were pretty close and when he told me the story, there wasn't any reason for him to lie. Who am I to say his experience isn't real?