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Amazon cuts 16k jobs

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#731

Post by mikeweiss »

coffeemug wrote: post #720
brikym wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to sound like a luddite I'm sure but I'm tried of these analogies using horses, tractors and so on. Labor involving muscles was replaced with tractors but people could just switch to using the other half of their body; The Brain. Now that a lot of the creative tasks and knowledge work is being replaced there isn't anywhere for those people to go. Maybe people with esoteric industry knowledge, vibe-coding sk…

I still don’t understand why people oppose that rather than enthusiastically desire it. The end state you’re describing is the culmination of the enlightenment project. Automating labor is the point! Then you can paint, or play chess, or eat amazing food, or do whatever you want. Work isn’t the end, it’s the means. Products and services is the end. If we can achieve the end via technology, who cares about the work?

Yes work is the means, the means to earn an income. Do you live in a country that has a big enough social safety net that you trust it to provide you the necessary income and healthcare so that you can just paint and play chess all day? I certainly don't... I live in the U.S.A :-/

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#732

Post by int_19h »

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…

The alternative is indeed UBI, and the obvious way to fund it is to tax automation so that it actually scales to however many people end up without jobs.

But for all the talk about UBI in techbro circles, it seems to never actually translate to any meaningful political moves. Microsoft, Amazon etc are pretty happy to throw millions of dollars at politicians to ensure that they can keep building their data centers, but UBI just gets lip service.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#733

Post by apsurd »

sfink wrote: post #703
LPisGood wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the thing here. Software engineering is an intelligence-complete problem. If AI can solve it, then it can solve any sort of knowledge work like accounting, financial analysis, etc

Only if by "solving it", you mean being able to write any program to do anything. Software engineering is a hubris-complete problem. Somehow, being able to do so much seems to make us all assume that everyone else is capable of so little. But just because we can write 1000 programs to do 1000 different things, and because AI can write 1000 programs to do 1000 different things, it doesn't mean that we can write the mi…

I value your weird rant. Yes it did go on as a thought stream, but there's sense in there.

I've been thinking a lot around a kind of smart-people paradox: very intellectual arguments all basically plotting a line toward some inevitable conclusion like super intelligence or consciousness. Everything is a raw compute problem.

While at the same time all scientific progress gives us more and more evidence that reality is non-computable, non linear.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#734

Post by rcruzeiro »

coffeemug wrote: post #720
brikym wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to sound like a luddite I'm sure but I'm tried of these analogies using horses, tractors and so on. Labor involving muscles was replaced with tractors but people could just switch to using the other half of their body; The Brain. Now that a lot of the creative tasks and knowledge work is being replaced there isn't anywhere for those people to go. Maybe people with esoteric industry knowledge, vibe-coding sk…

I still don’t understand why people oppose that rather than enthusiastically desire it. The end state you’re describing is the culmination of the enlightenment project. Automating labor is the point! Then you can paint, or play chess, or eat amazing food, or do whatever you want. Work isn’t the end, it’s the means. Products and services is the end. If we can achieve the end via technology, who cares about the work?

You are missing the part where we built our society on the fact that people need at least some money to exist with the basic level of dignity.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#735

Post by WalterBright »

Uehreka wrote: post #619
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…

> 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 only way forward. If this is what you think needs to happen and you live in the US, then you should be freaking out right now, not calmly posting takes like this. UBI is not a thing almost any current American politician is considering, and the overton window is spee…

The math doesn't work out for UBI.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#736

Post by int_19h »

kburman wrote: post #622
locusofself wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but at some point in the past, "Amazon India" was not a thing. Nor was "Microsoft India" and so forth. Surely you can understand what it feels like to be an American tech worker in a super high cost of living area, looking at reduction in headcount and continual offshoring of jobs as time goes by. I live in Seattle area, work at one of these big companies, I work with people in India almost every day and have b…

I get the fear, but look at it from the investor's perspective. The US market is tapped out, Amazon is already everywhere it can be. Amazon isn't expanding in India out of love for the country or a desire to see it grow. They are doing it because Wall Street demands infinite growth every single year. Amazon India went from zero to a market leader in a decade not because of charity, but because that is where the new m…

I'm pretty sure that most American software engineers would take a stable job with a salary without RSUs over RSUs but you can get laid off tomorrow.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#737

Post by Lambdanaut »

coffeemug wrote: post #720
brikym wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to sound like a luddite I'm sure but I'm tried of these analogies using horses, tractors and so on. Labor involving muscles was replaced with tractors but people could just switch to using the other half of their body; The Brain. Now that a lot of the creative tasks and knowledge work is being replaced there isn't anywhere for those people to go. Maybe people with esoteric industry knowledge, vibe-coding sk…

I still don’t understand why people oppose that rather than enthusiastically desire it. The end state you’re describing is the culmination of the enlightenment project. Automating labor is the point! Then you can paint, or play chess, or eat amazing food, or do whatever you want. Work isn’t the end, it’s the means. Products and services is the end. If we can achieve the end via technology, who cares about the work?

There's always two sides to a coin right? While everything you said is true, I think that there's a pattern people are generally aware of in this world. Things that don't serve a purpose, vanish.

We see it in worker replacement, in vestigial organic structures that shrink over millinea, and in the tools and objects we keep with us in our lives.

The question, once achieving this grandiose goal, is how long, and by what mechanism, will we continue to enjoy the fruits of our labor?

Perhaps there will be a time when we may enjoy this world without the pressure of being a cog within it, but ultimately this time may be short if we are able to manifest it at all.

The unease comes from the power we lose when we cease to be the means of production, and instead become a vestigial organ on a beast much more complex than ourselves.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#738

Post by int_19h »

irishcoffee wrote: post #514
repstosb wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And citizens benefit from the taxes paid by non-citizen immigrants, whether documented or undocumented. Not just income and payroll taxes that might be dodged by under-the-table arrangements, but sales taxes, property taxes (perhaps paid indirectly via rent to a taxpaying landlord), the consumer share (nearly 100%) of tariffs, etc. And much of that tax base is spent on benefits and services that are not accessible to…

Sales tax is actually paid by the vendor, they just pass the cost along. The landlord pays the property tax, they just pass the cost along. It is absolutely impossible for an undocumented alien to meaningfully contribute towards their tax burden in any meaningful way.

> Sales tax is actually paid by the vendor, they just pass the cost along. The landlord pays the property tax, they just pass the cost along.

This is sophistry. Ultimately the tax is paid by the person that brings their money to the table.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#739

Post by mjevans »

babyoil wrote: post #504
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…

You should watch this movie: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1527793/

Or Office Space (warning, Rated R for some language and crude distractions / conversations.) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804

Still, it documents the typical work culture of the US in the late 1990s / early 2000s. It's sad and amazing how much of that remains the same.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#740

Post by nmfisher »

Aurornis wrote: post #493
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…

> 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 reporting that to people above him. Any manager whose job was this simple was on borrowed time anyway. I think the person was feeding you a story around the campfire to impress you. Real management work do…

> Real management work doesn't operate like this.

Don't know about Amazon but my experience with middle management is that it's exactly like that.

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