Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 537 posts

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#331

Post by John23832 »

andsoitis wrote: post #243
rco8786 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"job loss" is purposefully passive to remove culpability from the entity (Amazon) that is making the active choice to terminate these people's jobs. It's the same as language like "officer involved shooting" to avoid saying "an officer shot a person" or calling a "murder" a "loss of life".

> purposefully passive to remove culpability from the entity (Amazon) that is making the active choice to terminate these people's jobs. Opening line in the article: "Amazon has confirmed it plans to cut thousands of jobs, saying it needs to be "organised more leanly" to seize the opportunity provided by artificial intelligence (AI). " And the statement from Amazon uses the phrase "we are reducing..."

Right and that is different that passive wording of "job loss" used above?

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#332

Post by [deleted] »

pruetj wrote: post #277
blenderob wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there were huge misses on areas like AI Honest question. What could they have possibly gained from AI? What did they miss out on by not getting into AI?

The only thing I can think of is if they had converted Alexa into a truly useful assistant and gotten people to sign up for a premium to it while everyone was still in awe of and having fun talking to LLMs. Even if they executed this perfectly though, I think all it would do is increase the burn rate related to Alexa. Plus there's no moat, everyone has a phone with more capable hardware that would be a better place f…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#333

Post by alt227 »

foobarian wrote: post #327
jvanderbot wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you noticed how bad their devices dept was gutted? I can easily imagine a proper AI system backing alexa, rolled out to all existing customers, which would potentially boost the viability of that whole product line. right now I have no idea what Alexa is for anymore. It pings me when a package arrives but so does my phone. I can't order from it, because it makes me open the app. I can manage a shopping list I gu…

The Alexa product as it is, is already lighting money on fire. Adding LLM integration to it would just be pouring gasoline on it; iirc inference is still not profitable even in easier sectors so Alexa would be a particularly bad place for it. (Even though it would be amazing UX, but I doubt enough people would pay the price it costs to break even).

Am I missing something? Alexa+ with LLMs was already released this year?

https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/devices/new-alexa-generativ...

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#334

Post by gabrielgio »

softwaredoug wrote: post #104
actionfromafar wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost like a merger of Capital and State.

You might say its rather socialist...

An actual socialist would say the state in capitalist society provides a legal and infrastructural framework that supports business enterprises and the accumulation of capital, so it is business as usual. But feel free to throw words around as they mean nothing.

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#335

Post by aziaziazi »

jvanderbot wrote: post #228
blenderob wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there were huge misses on areas like AI Honest question. What could they have possibly gained from AI? What did they miss out on by not getting into AI?

Have you noticed how bad their devices dept was gutted? I can easily imagine a proper AI system backing alexa, rolled out to all existing customers, which would potentially boost the viability of that whole product line. right now I have no idea what Alexa is for anymore. It pings me when a package arrives but so does my phone. I can't order from it, because it makes me open the app. I can manage a shopping list I gu…

I use almost daily my google nest to set timers hand free while cooking, and managing radio playbacks: I’m an avid web radio listener.

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#336

Post by tinyhouse »

JCM9 wrote: post #185

To be clear, it’s worse. Read the press release carefully: 1. 14k was the net change in “corporate headcount” which is PR puffery speak saying they’re firing a lot more but when you net out folks let go slotting into open roles elsewhere the net change today would be a 14k reduction 2. It also says that “looking ahead” “we expect to… find additional places we can remove layers, increase ownership, and realize efficie…

First, Andy led AWS to what it is today.

Second, Amazon had a problem before Andy took over. Way too many managers and incompetent people in very senior levels. The fact that he's doing something about it is a good thing for Amazon. You don't become a CEO of a behemoth such as Amazon and expect to show impact within 6 months. It takes years.

In terms of AI, they did invest in Anthropic early on and are a significant stakeholder. That's critical since Anthropic is a trillion dollar company in the making and they trump everyone in enterprise AI. They are much more likely to succeed with smart partnerships than doing their own thing.

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#338

Post by mschuster91 »

jalapenos wrote: post #146
mrtksn wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s like a rocket flew into the refugee camp vs the occupation forces struck the refugee camp with a rocket.

My favourite is during terrorist attacks in Europe, it's always like "car attacks crowd". Like the car's wife had left it and it had decided to go out with a bang.

The problem is, there isn't much initial facts to base on, other than that a vehicle has plowed into a crowd. In the early 30-60 minutes, you often don't even know how many people died and how many are injured because emergency services are still working on rescue (alive people) and recovery (dead people).

Maybe it's political or religious terrorism, maybe it's suicide-by-cop, maybe it's a generic mental health issue (think schizophrenics whose head voice tells them to commit violence), maybe it's a health issue (heart attack, driver floors the gas pedal), maybe it's a streetrace gone wrong, maybe it's a DUI, maybe it's a mechanical issue (loss of brake/steering), maybe it's a geriatric driver who just doesn't have any idea where he even is, maybe it's a driver blindly following Maps and ignoring the policeman winking at him, thus not noticing he's heading right for a rally.

You see, the list of issues why a car plows into a crowd is very very long, and often it takes the police hours to determine what's going on. They gotta interview bystanders and victims, they gotta obtain and review camera footage, possibly search the driver's home and digital devices - because unlike Twitter pseudo-journalists and click/ragebait "news" media, police can normally be held accountable if they claim something in public that doesn't turn out to be true.

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#339

Post by threetonesun »

UncleMeat wrote: post #142
joshuacc wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“firing people while turning a profit is 100% bad faith that should be regulated or barred.” That’s far too broad a claim. Just because you’re turning a profit doesn’t mean you should be locked into keeping all of your employees. Some are likely to be underperformers who don’t bring sufficient ROI compared to other investments/hires you could make.

My experience with these sorts of layoffs is that they are not tightly bound to performance. If you have underperformers you can fire them the ordinary way.

At this point I would not be surprised if there isn't an "AI" tool that looks across employees by salary range, department earnings, seniority and age and just generates a list at a moments notice. I was around for a desperate layoff at a small company in the early 2ks and got to watch as management basically ran around the office doing this logic in real time. Some people are get pulled in because they aren't high performing or they're unliked, but most was a simple expense/income calculation.

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#340

Post by harvey9 »

justonceokay wrote: post #290
jwmerrill wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Passive voice” is a grammatical term. “Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses,” is not an example of the passive voice. “14,000 workers were fired by Amazon,” is an example of the passive voice. There is not a 1:1 relationship between being vague about agency and using the passive voice.

GP obviously meant passive tone, not passive noun-verb relationship.

Still puts them in a weak position to critique others on their use of words. We might like to hold the BBC to a higher standard but none of the big news sites are good at details like this.
Post reply on HN