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Amazon braces for another major round of layoffs, 14,000 jobs at risk

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Re: Amazon braces for another major round of layoffs, 14,000 jobs at risk

#161

Post by geodel »

vineyardmike wrote: post #105
spwa4 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all the low hanging fruit has been picked, they need a fundamentally different employee base As anyone in software development can tell you, this does not compute. You cannot do things this way, and any experienced software engineer can tell you it doesn't work. Besides, it's not how Amazon worked at all. Amazon is famous for having systematically verified ("mathematically proved") how it's core systems operated. W…

Publishing a paper (in 2025) about formal verification is miles different than implementing it company wide. Anyone who has talked to an Amazonian SWE knows they’re not building their systems like this. The Amazon way is to quickly grind something out, and build on as many layers of AWS abstractions as possible. They’re famous for the hustle and grind not the stellar engineering acumen of formal verification.

Agree. I'd say they may have build 1% systems like this. But impression is whole cloud is built with formal verification

Re: Amazon braces for another major round of layoffs, 14,000 jobs at risk

#162

Post by to11mtm »

joe_mamba wrote: post #120
xienze wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have been offshoring for decades. We go in cycles of execs asking “why the hell are we paying these entitled Americans so much when Indian will do just as good for peanuts?”, then offshoring, then realizing it doesn’t work that well. The next guy comes in and the cycle repeats. However, the second an IT union gets established they’re just going to say the hell with it, India ain’t so bad.

>then realizing it doesn’t work that well How isn't it working? Most big tech companies have large pools of workers in India/Asia/LatAm/CEE at this point. So something must be working if they keep growing there.

[dead]

Re: Amazon braces for another major round of layoffs, 14,000 jobs at risk

#163

Post by pvtmert »

alephnerd wrote: post #2

https://www.aboutamazon.in/news/economic-impact/amazon-econo... and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46746543

> Under Prime Minister Modi's leadership, India has successfully built digital infrastructure that connects businesses to customers, small towns to global markets, and traditional enterprises to modern technology.

I smell corruption in this sentence

Re: Amazon braces for another major round of layoffs, 14,000 jobs at risk

#165

Post by 4er_transform »

selfawareMammal wrote: post #82
4er_transform wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You're entirely relying on a false dichotomy and an unsupported causal chain, assuming (without evidence!) that unions inherently reduce efficiency, slow growth, and lower living standards. The fact is that there's evidence that unions can correct power imbalances, raise wages, reduce inequality, and even support long-term productivity and social stability

Unions are everywhere and always a market distortion. Using political power to pull wealth into your union that would otherwise spread to the rest of society via competition (in labor and capital markets) is bad.

The only good unions are the ones that serve geopolitical interests of states that are positive for humanity. A steel workers union is subsidized by the rest of society, but if it keeps steel production in the US, making the US more formidable and able to project humanity-advancing policy, then it is good.

Unions freeze market forces, which raises wages, but those raised wages come directly from other parts of the economy and do so inefficiently (cost more than a dollar elsewhere to increase the wages by a dollar). This is because it distorts comparative advantages. Inequality can be reduced by unions, but only in short term. By freezing market forces in this pocket you are creating inefficiencies, which come at a cost over time (like competitive and bad actors becoming dominant).

Wages and inequality was better in the 1950s/60s US despite of unions. The US was 50% of the global economy, had dollar dominance, just about the only industrial base intact, a skilled workforce with a clear competitive advantage. These are what made wages high and inequality low.

Take the long-term perspective and center humanity rather than picking winners and losers. Unions are an emotionally charged topic because labor groups reap power from them and business groups lose power from them. This is noise. We should make decisions like this based on what serves humanity’s long term interests, and unions (and business cartels/lobbies) hold humanity back.

Re: Amazon braces for another major round of layoffs, 14,000 jobs at risk

#166

Post by 4er_transform »

andrekandre wrote: post #131
4er_transform wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Preventing efficiency in markets slows growth, which slows the progression of living standards. graph me unionization levels, market efficiency and standards of living (for the bottom 80%) and tell me what is correlated with what

If I did, would it change your mind?

Re: Amazon braces for another major round of layoffs, 14,000 jobs at risk

#167

Post by 4er_transform »

Spooky23 wrote: post #92
4er_transform wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Unionism is capitalism. If you are a W2 employee in the United States, you are in a contractual relationship in which you have very limited leverage to negotiate and limited protections. Humans organize together in many different ways for many different reasons. Your own assertion belies that — if my negotiating my terms of working for someone is crime against humanity, why should the guy controlling the capital have…

Who cares about capitalism? It’s a label. What matters is eliminating rent-seeking behavior. Unions are rent-seeking. Business cartels/groups are also rent seeking. Abolish them all

Re: Amazon braces for another major round of layoffs, 14,000 jobs at risk

#168

Post by 4er_transform »

wat10000 wrote: post #85
4er_transform wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Unions are just businesses that sell labor. There’s nothing wrong with getting a bunch of people to cooperate on selling labor, any more than there is with getting a bunch of people together to cooperate on selling bananas.

Unions are rent-seeking behavior and that’s the problem. Voluntary unions are one thing, but the way unions are build today is requiring labor to participate and for businesses to buy from the union.

Rent-seeking behavior of any kind holds humanity back.

Re: Amazon braces for another major round of layoffs, 14,000 jobs at risk

#169

Post by 4er_transform »

Refreeze5224 wrote: post #102
4er_transform wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Markets are anti-human. Any economic system not designed for the well-being of human beings is anti-human. "Living standards" is a concept the owning class uses to justify their obscene wealth and promulgation of a system solely focused on profit.

What is well-being to you?

You’re right: all things should serve humanity, including markets.

Rent-seeking behavior of any kind, including unions, including business engaged in rent-seeking, are anti-human.

Well-being needs to be properly understood though. Well-being is the state of being most sustainably and perfectly aligned with forwarding humanity.

That means valuable work that contributes to the progression of humanity, the circumstances that make reproduction viable and abundant, the resources to support cultivating oneself and others to your and their maximum potential serving humanity.

It doesn’t mean the ability to spend your days on the couch, or sitting on the beach, or devoting all your time to a hobby that does nothing to serve humanity.

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