Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon cuts 16k jobs

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 1001 posts

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#311

Post by tannerc »

volkk wrote: post #266
tannerc wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So you have zero evidence to convey something you claim is “obvious”? Got it.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#312

Post by drecked »

zdragnar wrote: post #125
yodsanklai wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are enough american job seekers in CS to justify not needing H1B. As an interviewer in a big tech company, it seems all candidates I interview are foreigners who often graduated in the US. Either the company discriminates (which I really doubt it does), or there aren't enough qualified Americans for some jobs. And even if there are, the largest pool of candidates, the better.

Big tech companies are biased to sourcing from big name universities that have a lot of foreign students, and big tech companies were much more likely to go through the effort of H1B than smaller companies. As such your candidate pool is more heavily skewed than elsewhere.

All the conspiracies theories can be put to bed by walking into any engineering department (maybe outside of biomedical engineering…which makes me think this may be related to how Americans demonize math) and observing that the majority of students are foreign or maybe second generation immigrants.

This ratio gets worse because American students are disproportionately more likely to follow up their engineering undergrad with law or business school, so even if they may be engineers they’ll get into business and/or something like patent attorney going forward.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#314

Post by ipaddr »

yodsanklai wrote: post #184
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) There's a very reasonable chance the company discriminates. Sorry, but once bitten, twice shy. One company gets caught at it and the whole industry develops a reputation. 2) If you've got a problem finding candidates, there's 16,000 more on the market now. Congratulations! 3) If you think there must be something wrong with those 16,000, well, that would explain where your pipeline is going wrong.

> There's a very reasonable chance the company discriminates I don't see how this is even possible. There would be a memo from the CEO to 1000s of recruiters asking them to favor foreigners? that would leak immediately.

They pay the top Indian firms for candidate referrals. And a CEO would say we need more diversity and make that a company goal.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#315

Post by [deleted] »

energy123 wrote: post #306
baxtr wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean maybe that's the good news. There is huge potential for an upswing!

I don't think that's how it works. It's not like coiling a spring it's more like starting to roll a ball down a hill, once you ruin it it keeps getting worse in a feedback loop as various systems feed on each other (populism, erosion of norms, etc).

[deleted]

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#316

Post by esseph »

mvdtnz wrote: post #277
antonyh wrote: post #136

I'm outside the US, and boycotting Amazon for anything I can get elsewhere (which turns out isn't everything, but best efforts and all that). The shift towards AI is either a very bad thing (as per Microslop and the raft of recent articles about quality dropping), or just a cheap excuse to replace expensive staff with cheaper people. Alternatively they may be using AI in HR as part of the decision making, and it's ma…

I find it very hard to believe you can't boycott Amazon completely. They don't even exist in my country and it has never been a struggle to find anything you might get there.

> They don't exist in my country ... it has never been a struggle to find anything.

Amazon absolutely crushed a lot of physical brick-and-mortar stores. Drove them out of business.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#317

Post by rich_sasha »

nicoburns wrote: post #121
rich_sasha wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse is only half the story. I don't fully understand why they are doing it though. Companies hire people to make money, not as an act of social conformance. Global economy doesn't look that terrible. Nor is the AI story that believable. Is it just the CEO Zeitgeist? All the guys at Aspen talking about what fraction they cut, just as 5 years ago they bragged how bloated their org chart is? TBH the "ZIRP overhiring"…

> Global economy doesn't look that terrible. It doesn't? I was born in the 90s (so admittedly 2008 was before I started working), but the economy is looking the worst it's been in my lifetime to me.

US real GDP is racing ahead: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDPC1 . Inflation is fine, even if you don't fully believe the official numbers: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FPCPITOTLZGUSA . Unemployment is increasing but below long term mean: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE . Interest rates are at a reasonably business-friendly level.

This is all the USofA. Elsewhere, China is allegedly also printing GDP growth like crazy. Europe is maybe a little stagnant but also not, on the whole, awful.

At the face of it, it's at least a C+ if not better. So if you'd claim it's terrible, there's some explaining to do.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#318

Post by boelboel »

ferguess_k wrote: post #117
oytis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was pretty obvious what is going to follow axing of H1B

It's even less expensive! Problem solved. Mr. President, we have successfully axed all H1B positions, as you have wished.

Fire h1b positions, make them leave the US and rehire them back in their home country. They can train their new co-workers.

I'm not serious but I'm sure some people on H1B have had similar happen. From a business POV this would be an ideal situation.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#319

Post by no_wizard »

juujian wrote: post #148
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

Amazon has contributed enough to the current administration that I doubt they will face any consequences. Maybe another round of shakedowns and more financial contributions, but they have figured out pretty quickly how to play the game and end up on the good side of the current administration.

Amazon's MGM subsidiary spent 75 million dollars thus far on the Melania Trump documentary that by all accounts, is looking like its going to be a box office bomb. Reportedly, 30 million of that 75 went directly to Melania[0]

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jan/28/melania-trump-d...

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#320

Post by esseph »

volkk wrote: post #168
tannerc wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly indicates the post was AI generated?

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've been writing in a contrasting style like that since probably 5th or 6th grade.

... I wonder how much the writings of a lot of autistic / borderline folks impacted the LLM writing style.

Post reply on HN