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Amazon cuts 16k jobs

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#101

Post by Xirdus »

adamsb6 wrote: post #90
rat9988 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not american, but it seems to me there are enough american job seekers in CS to justify not needing H1B. I'm not sure anyway what is the relationship between the potential difficulty of hiring new folks, and firing current folks in USA to offshore roles, are relates.

There's not a surplus of American developers that can pass interview loops at top tech employers.

They are creating this very surplus by firing 16,000 people who already did. And that's on top of all the mass firings last year.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#102

Post by waynesonfire »

rat9988 wrote: post #76
yodsanklai wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how this is also related to the attacks on the H1B visa.

I'm not american, but it seems to me there are enough american job seekers in CS to justify not needing H1B. I'm not sure anyway what is the relationship between the potential difficulty of hiring new folks, and firing current folks in USA to offshore roles, are relates.

Just look at the open roles for these companies, all India. They're not hiding it. Don't even need H1B.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#103

Post by scottLobster »

locknitpicker wrote: post #74
scottLobster wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You underestimate how sclerotic large corporations can be. I've seen people do zero work, quite visibly, at fortune 500s and not be fired for over a year.

> You underestimate how sclerotic large corporations can be. I've seen people do zero work (...) This is the very first time I saw anyone with a straight face talking about Amazon workers and mentioning "people do zero work, quite visible".

To be fair I've never worked at Amazon, but at this point they have 1.6 million employees worldwide. I don't care what their hiring brochures say, if you think they don't suffer the same ailments as every corporation that size I have a bridge to sell you.

Certain sectors are high performing centers of excellence whose staff write blog posts that get posted to HN, publish papers, get put on the covers of hiring media and give speeches. The majority of the company is somewhere in the middle holding down their relatively uneventful but important functions, and probably a larger chunk than Corporate leadership would like to acknowledge are deadweight hiding in the cracks.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#104

Post by nerdponx »

Buttons840 wrote: post #78
focusgroup0 wrote: post #37

>Amazon axes 16,000 American jobs as it ... relocates to a larger campus in India https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/10/amazon-to-invest-additiona...

Once again the mask of "AI" is really just human labor underneath. I've personally seen founders raise millions of dollars because of "AI" that is really just manual labor. I know, I wrote the code that enabled the manual laborers. This was like 10 years ago; the lie is even easier to tell now. And that is so so important in an economy where gaining favor from those who already have money is far better than just sell…

Back when IBM Watson was a thing, the rumor I heard was that it was actually just a big team of data people and programmers who would bang out stuff in a hurry and then they would pretend like the AI came up with it.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#105

Post by francisofascii »

coredog64 wrote: post #64
Adiqq wrote: post #33

It would be too much to ask to have fair and equal society, so instead we observe how capitalism/fascism will ruin the world over and over again.

FWIW, the employees in question are at least in the 90th percentile of US salaries if not 99th percentile (L5 is ~ $250K, L6 is ~ $399K, and L7 is north of $500K)

In regards to fairness, many times these cuts are based what group you are in, rather than performance. You wonder, hypothetically, would the L5s and above all agree to accepting a 20% pay cut in exchange for not having layoffs. It strange that one person keeps the job paying $500K, while the other unlucky one will have trouble getting a new $150K job due to the terrible job market.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#106

Post by ProllyInfamous »

siliconc0w wrote: post #40

We're basically in a low-key recession that is being masked by circular AI deals and speculation.

From March 16, 2020 (Covid scare reality / market-drop), the marketcaps of Top 10,000 traded companies has doubled (from low $70 Trillion USD to low $140 T)

But bullion has done even better (particularly past month).

So — extrapolating — I'd recon the USD is inflating away its problems (mostly: itself).

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#109

Post by rob74 »

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"…

...or 2 years ago they agreed that employees should return to the office for at least 3 days per week, of course only as a temporary measure before full RTO?

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#110

Post by Sevii »

adamsb6 wrote: post #90
rat9988 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not american, but it seems to me there are enough american job seekers in CS to justify not needing H1B. I'm not sure anyway what is the relationship between the potential difficulty of hiring new folks, and firing current folks in USA to offshore roles, are relates.

There's not a surplus of American developers that can pass interview loops at top tech employers.

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.
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