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Amazon cuts 16k jobs

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#281

Post by SkyeCA »

radicalethics wrote: post #18

I feel like this is the most natural layoff I've seen in twenty years (that is not the same as saying I feel good about it). Truly, most software companies need to cut their entire roster and re-draft quite frankly. You will need less people and have entirely new goals. This is beyond "economic" reality, AI has made it intuitive to restructure and reorient. Not doing so will just mean you will be blind-sided by any c…

> I think this will be better for all in terms of finding their true purpose in life.

I'm sure people losing their good paying jobs and being forced into shitty ones, or not finding replacement employment at all, will be just what they need to find their true purposes in life

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#282

Post by cmrdporcupine »

sejje wrote: post #235
goatlover wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, when the arbitrary tarriff formula was announced for every nation, the stock markets were down thousands, and the bond market was fluctuating. Then you had the short term trade war with China were both countries set tarrifs so high no imports/exports between the two happened for a month, and there was a concern about empty shelves in major department stores. But as one Wall Street executive put it, "Trump also…

So Trump's tariffs didn't tank the economy because everyone outsmarted him?

Because the advertised quantity of tariffs exceeded the actual reality.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#283

Post by paxys »

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…

Did you copy paste this from LinkedIn?

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#284

Post by SilverElfin »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #253
adamsb6 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

H1B workers cost more on average than permanent residents. That’s just based on salary. Once you account for the fees and legal costs and risks of the immigration process, H1B workers are way more expensive. Also, these visas can be transferred between companies.

There’s no such thing as an indentured servitude class here - this is just part of the giant racist misinformation machine of the right, to make it seem like shutting it down would somehow be doing those employees a favor. In reality it’ll hurt the entire country.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#285

Post by m0llusk »

nxm wrote: post #243
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."

might be able to get a fat contract fee from letting Amazon know about that

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#286

Post by dheera »

tmoertel wrote: post #209
dheera wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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 adversity but that's it. Is bullying nerds still happening? It was commonplace when I was young in the 1980s. (In fact, it was so common that it was the basis of the 1984 movie…

> But I had thought the social status of nerds and geeks had leveled up a few times since then.

Only in places like Palo Alto, Boston, Seattle, etc.

Not in most of the cornfield country.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#287

Post by SilverElfin »

dheera wrote: post #157
rat9988 wrote: 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…

I’m not sure why you’re getting downvoted. The most important paper in the AI era was written by a team of immigrants.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#288

Post by sejje »

scottLobster wrote: post #265
sejje wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tr…

I agree they've been very erratic. What does that have to do with whether or not our economy tanked as a result? It didn't, the prophecies were FUD, everything he does is bad, blah blah.

Trump's a lethal threat that is too incompetent to be lethal? Okay. So quit with the FUD then.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#289

Post by znpy »

vidarh wrote: post #210
klipt wrote: 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.

Or they just move their "headquarters" and the US part of the business will be a subsidiary. This is an old, and well tested strategy. E.g. Commodore International formally had its head office in The Bahamas, but the entire leadership team worked out of the US. You can try putting more constraints on what will get a company considerd a US company to catch those kinds of structures, but as you indirectly point out, th…

You don’t have to dig commodore from the grave, there are current-day examples of companies doing the same.

Just to name one (even if it’s not American): Canonical.

It (canonical) is registered in the isle of Man, a fairly known tax haven.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#290

Post by greenavocado »

ra7 wrote: post #228
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

If you want American companies to not outsource any jobs AND have full foreign market access, get ready to get market access revoked from places like India. They’ll just incentivize their local companies to compete, and Amazon has plenty of local competition there already. Amazon themselves have experienced in the past how heavy-handed Indian regulators can be. It’s not a zero-sum game anymore. You cannot have only o…

> You cannot have only one side (US companies) capture 100% of the value.

This is the value prop of the US military

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