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

441–450 of 1001 posts

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#441

Post by milch »

draygonia wrote: post #396
jandrese wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

No, because H1B has pay requirements. As someone who went through the process with Amazon I can confirm that they definitely do offer you a salary that is in line with the local market. There might be lower incentive for raises down the line, but that's a conspiracy theory at best

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#442

Post by milch »

mc32 wrote: post #373
Analemma_ wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could use this exact argument to say nobody should ever have children-- children also raise inflation, home prices, etc. And the majority of your property taxes go specifically towards programs which would be unneeded if nobody had any children. The fact that naive anti-immigration arguments can be copy-pasted unchanged into arguments against having children is a sign that maybe those arguments are stupid. To und…

Children are future taxpayers the majority with parents who were not a tax burden --net positive tax contribution. People without Children benefit from the taxes paid by the children of people who rear children -i.e. people without children aren't "cashing out" their tax contributed retirement --that contribution went to other retirees.

Immigrants pay social security taxes, unemployment taxes, ... that they also will never be able to benefit from. Those are purely for the benefit of US citizens

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#443

Post by caminante »

hypeatei wrote: post #428
caminante wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think it's really disputed that high inflation is on the horizon This is moving the goalpost because you know economists (the critics) forecasted major inflation sooner/now, and it hasn't happened. > Care to list those? [...] it assumes that we're already in the position of being an export based economy which we're not and not tangibly working towards. You're not making sense or making coherent thoughts. Th…

> This is moving the goalpost because you know economists (the critics) forecasted major inflation sooner/now Yes, because no one expected him to chicken out as hard as he did. It also came out that people in his cabinet (specifically Howard Lutnick) were betting against tariffs while simultaneously advocating for them. The legal opinion is heavily leaning towards them being illegal after many lower court decisions.…

> Do you care to explain how tariffs wouldn't be inflationary if the actions matched the rhetoric?

It's like you're asking people to explain something that happened as if there's no explanation beyond your hatred of Trump. Why do you choose to dismiss drivers like stockpiling inventory, increased USMCA compliance, broader economic offsets (AI/tech boom, energy production) that could explain how tariffs aren't necessarily inflationary?

> Look at how much we import vs how much we export. What would you call an economy that imports more...

You ask this as if I didn't say the US imports more than it exports.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#444

Post by johnnyanmac »

echelon wrote: post #369
autokad wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not so sure on that. They raise inflation, home prices, etc. The locals see no real benefit except having to pay more for everything. While more taxes are collected, most of that goes to offsetting just some of the economic pain induced by the people living there. and it is in fact zero sum. every spot filled in university or company is a spot not taken by a local, as its obvious by the numbers, more local peopl…

Companies want to cut costs. They will. If you don't bring more fungible labor into the US, the jobs will be offshored. Look at what just happened to film labor in 2022-2023. The industry was burgeoning off the heels of the streaming wars and ZIRP. Then the stikes happened. Amazon and Netflix took trained crews in the Eastern Europe bloc and leveraged tax deals and existing infra in Ireland and the UK. Film productio…

If you really think that companies are moving out of country because "there's not enough talent", despite having some of the more relaxed tax codes and most talented universities here: well, sure. That would be hopeless. It also sounds like you're buying snake oil.

They had decades to off shore, and they chose not to. I don't think Ai in the near term (<15 years) is going to change that dial much. If they do leave, there's plenty of talent to fill the void.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#445

Post by albatross79 »

ericmcer wrote: post #186
tchalla wrote: post #97

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

"moved wherever the company needed me and fixed problems that had been sitting untouched because no one else could untangle them." A screenshot later on shows he was a manager who spent his entire career in Houston. So... he didn't move and I associate "untangling difficult problems" as something an engineer should brag about not a manager. Reads like AI generated slop that doesn't correlate with the actual situation…

Yeah these bums better get with the program. If The Company needs you to uproot your life and move to Timbuktu start packing or hit the bricks pal.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#446

Post by johnnyanmac »

square_usual wrote: post #387
rkomorn wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had three different H1Bs. Yes, transfers are easy, but they're sure a hell more risky than staying at your current job and enduring whatever you have to. You're not beholden to your employer, but you have borderline coercive reasons to stay.

Great, yes, but you sure as hell don't have "absolute loyalty" to a company.

Its all relative. A burned out American can drop out tomorrow with no short term plan. H1Bs cannot fo that unless they are ready to go back to their previous country.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#447

Post by albatross79 »

vitaflo wrote: post #332
sergiotapia wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We must do something about labor offshoring to india. It's too much. I want my children to have opportunities here in the country they were born in.

Factory workers said that in the 90s too. Didn’t work out to well for them.

It didn't, but it got us Trump too, so there's that. Let's see what happens this time.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#448

Post by johnnyanmac »

drecked wrote: post #301
Sevii wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FAANG has been engaged in mass layoffs for two years now. How can you possibly make the claim that there is a surplus of people who can pass the interview loops? Obviously, there isn't because they are firing people who passed those loops.

You’re ignoring the part where FAANG massively overhired in the years preceding. Meta and Amazon doubled their headcount in the 2-3 years of the pandemic. Others like Google increased by 60+%. You’re also forgetting about this little thing popularly called AI that happened in the intervening years. There may be an argument that H1B isn’t fit to purpose in a post AI world (although that argument is also false if we th…

>You’re ignoring the part where FAANG massively overhired in the years preceding.

Yes, because overhiring is a lie generated to justify layoffs. I'd hope by year 3 that we'd see through this. If they "overhired", why is hiring still up globally while down in the US?

>You’re also forgetting about this little thing popularly called AI that happened in the intervening years.

What about it? Hiring numbers are still up. Its clearly not replacing workers as of now.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#450

Post by watwut »

GrinningFool wrote: post #408
watwut wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not an answer to the "who is responsible for X now" question. Laid off Bill is not responsible for X now. Also, it is not useful answer at all, it is an uncooperative answer. Whoever is asking about the responsible person is trying to work. They have legitimate question about who they should contact about X, sending them to someone who does not work there is less then useless.

But it doesn't change that Bill was the person who was responsible, and now is gone. So what exactly are they supposed to say? In the context of the GP's post, that seems to be the point - there is no longer anybody there who is responsible for X anymore.

> So what exactly are they supposed to say?

Several options, pretty much all of them involve being actually cooperative rather then intentionally unhelpful. If Bill was part of some other team, point to that team or its leader.

If he was in your team, you or leader can ask about what the person wants and move from there. Maybe you can actually answer the question. Maybe the proper reaction involves raising jira ticket. Maybe the answer is "we are probably not going to do that anymore". It all depends on what the person who came with the question wants.

> But it doesn't change that Bill was the person who was responsible, and now is gone.

The other people are still there. And the team IS responsible for X. And without doubt, they are fully responsible for helping figure out who should be contacted now and what should be done.

That is normal part of work after any reorganization.

Post reply on HN