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Amazon cuts 16k jobs

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#651

Post by tannerc »

volkk wrote: post #577
tannerc wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

here's your evidence, tanner https://xcancel.com/PlumbNick/status/2016590894485385347#m I'm not going to say i told you so, but you should utilize these tools more before you start arguing, especially when it's so goddamn obvious

If you read his original draft you can see how much of it was still carried over, as well as how his original writing conveys much of your same arguments that an AI wrote the final text.

I don’t think your point is as strong as you believe it is.

Lastly, I work directly with AI models and utilize all popular generators every single day, so I don’t know why you think you’re the expert here.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#652

Post by sejje »

malshe wrote: post #380
sejje wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That's because Trump gave many extensions and concessions to so many countries. Remember there was 125% on China in May 2025 before Xi decided to use rare earth minerals to fight back. Maybe you have heard of TACO. So the tariffs as threatened never panned out in reality.

How come all the existing tariffs don't tank the economy?

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#653

Post by sejje »

esseph wrote: post #327
sejje wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The impact to social bonds between the US and other Western nations has been thrown completely off track, and now they are looking for exits from anything US related. These tarrifs were the absolutely dumbest thing imaginable, and have brought the post WWII period of US economic prosperity to a point it can never recover. It's only down from here. We pissed off our friends.

I agree, social credit is changing. We're not as friendly with other western nations anymore, we're dictating terms.

When will we start seeing the downtrend?

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#654

Post by ipaddr »

mghackerlady wrote: post #371
ipaddr wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vets, climate change scientists, doctors, environmental lawyers and athletics. Bonus points for trustfunds and influencers. Women want to make as much as men but also want their partner to make more than them. Ever see a female doctor marrying a plumber or construction worker? No they marry Male doctors or lawyer of higher status.

Has it ever occurred to you that all those fields have one thing in common? it's empathy. The people in those positions tend to not be the kind to murder you when you say no. Not saying that's true for blue collar men, but the odds are significantly higher. Also doctors and lawyers naturally tend to be around doctors and lawyers, that's hardly the crazy observation you seem to think it is

Not sure lawyers or climate scientists have more empathy then a middle age man who lives with his mother and cares for her while getting a disability check. But woman prefer the former.

The answer is woman value status.

Getting murdered is a hollywood / news fear that rarely happens. People should be worried about deadly things that happen often like cancer or heart attacks. Those are rarely the leading story on the nightly news.

Programmers are around programmers but the rate they marry another programmer is much less. Even with a gender imbalance women programmers are not seeking male programmers like women doctors.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#655

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #509
still-learning wrote: post #11

I wonder what kind of unprecedented economic growth we'd be seeing right now if we kept with the status quo rather than imposing tariffs and scaring off foreign investors.

The US was setting itself for quite a recovery in 2024... and for a class war too, so IDK what would get there first.

Yeah, and as part of the "class war", a majority of the lower classes decided to elect a billionaire whose first order of business was to implement giant tax cuts for the richest Americans while cutting programs like Medicaid and SNAP.

Class war will never work in America because we're too stupid.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#656

Post by ytoawwhra92 »

Shocka1 wrote: post #566
socalgal2 wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm super sympathetic that losing your job sucks. I lost mine once. At the same time, what's the alternative? Progress happens. We no longer have liveries for holding horses nor horse shoe makers (not at the level we used to). We no longer have telephone operators. Making up jobs to keep people employed isn't a viable solution to me. Supporting them in some way (re-training, UBI, service work, ...) seems like the onl…

IMO, this is one of the better takes in this thread. I'm a big fan of Hazlitt's book Economics in One Lesson, which gives a very condensed version of some economic ideas - one of them being automation, with really good examples in the past of labor saving machines like the printing press being created. When I first read it a decade ago I didn't think my profession might be like the printing press, but it's definitely…

All very well to have a plan, and I'm sure some people manage to successfully "repurpose" themselves, but historically the way this plays out is that redundant workers live out their days in relative poverty and it's their children/grandchildren who find new opportunities out of economic necessity. Usually takes 2-3 generations for the impact on workers to fully shake out.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#657

Post by Aurornis »

dymk wrote: post #603
Aurornis wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That person's pinned message shows that he started his campaign for Congress almost 2 months ago. He says he was laid off today. He's been Tweeting non-stop daily and appears to be working hard on his campaign. I don't think you can separate his active run for Congress from this layoff. Making an actual run for Congress is a huge time commitment and I don't see how it would be compatible with being an L7 manager at A…

7 years at Amazon without being laid off (promoted, in fact) and you blame it on 2 months of what you assume is poor performance

> and you blame it on 2 months of what you assume is poor performance

The official registration and launch of the campaign was 2 months ago, but he started long before that. If you read his timeline he didn't just wake up one day and decide to run for Congress 2 months ago.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#658

Post by moshegramovsky »

chankstein38 wrote: post #292
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

If that's the case I feel like you couldn't actually be using them or paying attention. I'm a big proponent and use LLMs for code and hardware projects constantly but Gemini Pro and ChatGPT 5.2 are both probably the worst state we've seen. 6 months ago I was worried but at this point I have started finding other ways to find answers to things. Going back to the stone tablets of googling and looking at Stackoverflow o…

> I still use them but find that more of the time is spent arguing with it and correcting problems with it than actually getting any useful product.

I feel the same. They're better at some things yes, but also worse at other things. And for me, they're worse at my really important use cases. I could spend a month typing prompts into Codex or AntiGravity and still be left holding the bag. Just yesterday I had a fresh prompt and Geminin bombed super hard on some basic work. Insisting the problem was X when it wasn't. I don't know. I was super bullish but now I'm feeling far from sold on it.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#659

Post by techblueberry »

socalgal2 wrote: post #507
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…

I'm super sympathetic that losing your job sucks. I lost mine once. At the same time, what's the alternative? Progress happens. We no longer have liveries for holding horses nor horse shoe makers (not at the level we used to). We no longer have telephone operators. Making up jobs to keep people employed isn't a viable solution to me. Supporting them in some way (re-training, UBI, service work, ...) seems like the onl…

> At the same time, what's the alternative? Progress happens.

I actually wonder if solving this problem - this feeling of powerlessness in the face of progress is an interesting problem to solve in our time. Plenty of people have figured this out. The Amish, people move to islands and other countries to not be part of modern progress.

"Making up jobs to keep people employed isn't a viable solution to me. " Why not? I mean Keynes argued something like: if the Treasury filled old bottles with banknotes, buried them in disused coal mines, filled the mines with rubbish, and then left it to private enterprise to dig them up again, there would be no more unemployment and the real income of the community would probably become a good deal larger than it actually was."

But it really does feel sometimes like. Why do we feel this powerlessness to progress? Why can't we architect the world we want to have? I have really been wondering. Lots of religious groups want to revert some progress. Maybe these whole network cities folks have a point. Maybe we can have a city like pegged to the like technical and architectural standards of the victorian era.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#660

Post by bix6 »

andai wrote: post #384
dzonga wrote: post #375

Insightful Comment from X - https://xcancel.com/PlumbNick/status/2016500347053773198?s=2... I was an L7, I led global AI enablement. I built systems executives depended on, moved wherever the company needed me and fixed problems that had been sitting untouched because no one else could untangle them. And I was still cut. Here’s the part we’re all supposed to politely ignore: in the U.S. right now, experience isn’t an…

Yeah, it looks to me like the best time to be a business owner, and the worst time to be employed.

It’s hard to be a small business right now. Everything is dominated by a few who have massive resource advantages.
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