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Amazon cuts 16k jobs

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#391

Post by belter »

dmix wrote: post #204
kburman wrote: post #169

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.

Many Software Engineers gone. At L6 and L7 level.

Details here: https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonemployees/

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#392

Post by pibaker »

rich_sasha wrote: post #68
paxys wrote: post #4

Every large company is updating its standard layoffs announcement press release from "economic headwinds" to "AI".

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"…

It is an open secret among the ownership class that the labor market got too good for the workers around 2021-2022 especially for tech. What you are seeing now is a possibly colluded squeeze on tech employment to keep the workers on their toes and stay docile and servile.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#393

Post by ericmay »

OJFord wrote: post #361
ericmay wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you are a big online retailer in a country, you will have a big corporate presence in that country. Is that true? Could you think of some large retailers in other countries, like the United States, without a big corporate presence? What do you mean when you say "big"? 1,000 employees? 10,000? 100?

It's not really on them to think of an example to disprove themselves? Do you have one in mind?

Ok let's try this another way:

if you are a big online retailer in a country, you will not have a big corporate presence in that country.

Now it's on you to think of an example to disprove me, certainly I'm not going to think an example to disprove myself.

Do you see the problem with this pattern? I could claim all sorts of things and then say, well sorry you have to go do all this work to refute my claims. Something claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. But I really was asking whether that's true or not, because in my mind there are a number of large online retailers that operate in the United States for example, without a large corporate presence here.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#394

Post by layer8 »

el_nahual wrote: post #347
tchalla wrote: post #97

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

Inconsistent jingoistic nationalism. On one hand, he claims that he "fixed problems that had been sitting untouched because no one else could untangle them." And on the other hand he claims his layoff on "a global labor market with almost no guardrails." So which is it: did he really work on problems no one else could solve, or was he replaced by cheap foreign labor? Probably neither. The most likely scenario here is…

Or c) Amazon knew about his running for Congress.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#395

Post by shimman »

cultofmetatron wrote: post #177
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. 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…

Tech industry has no problems working with state police forces to imprison woman that get abortions or just generally profit off of making teenage girls depressed.

We should applaud those women for not willing to date people that inflict misery and death upon them.

Maybe the kids are alright after all?

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#396

Post by draygonia »

jandrese wrote: post #340
KerrAvon wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should want open borders. Immigration is a significant net positive. But we can settle for controlled immigration with liberal limits. H1-B is stupid on its face. You're seriously telling me that this software engineering job absolutely cannot be filled by an American? That doesn't pass the laugh test.

> H1-B is stupid on its face. You're seriously telling me that this software engineering job absolutely cannot be filled by an American? That doesn't pass the laugh test. The job description is a senior full stack product developer fluent in all programming languages and frameworks. Salary is $70,000/year. Somehow they can never find Americans to fill those jobs. They'll go on Linkedin complaining that Americans are…

That seems low. Is it a corporate strategy to set a low salary and when nobody local fills it (because it's below the competitive rate) they get to hire H1-B?

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#397

Post by brewdad »

Funny enough, I have an acquaintance who has been job hunting for almost a year. They are expecting an offer from Amazon Corporate later this week or early next week. They are early in their career and will cost less to hire, so it still makes sense I guess.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#398

Post by layer8 »

seinvak wrote: post #250
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.

Amazon is mostly laying off managers, however, not developers.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#399

Post by volkk »

layer8 wrote: post #390
volkk wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you can’t explain it, then you don’t actually understand it.

i just don't feel like enumerating all of the common patterns ai slop produces. again, if you don't see this as obvious, i can tell you're clearly not using this stuff often enough (which might be a good thing)

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#400

Post by [deleted] »

bopbopbop7 wrote: post #116
computerphage wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why isn't the AI story believable? It seems to me that AI is getting more and more productive

Is there any quantitative evidence for AI increasing productivity? Other than AI influencer blog posts and pre-IPO marketing from AI companies?

[deleted]
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