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Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

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

#341

Post by jplusequalt »

JustExAWS wrote: post #287
pjc50 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As an employee you don't have financial risk tied to the company, you get a regular paycheck. But if you are an investor you take a risk that the money you invest can one day just vanish with zero return. I would like people who cannot distinguish between an income stream and a capital value to learn what an "annuity" is. Employees have very significant financial risk tied to the company because it's their main sou…

I have been an employee for 30 years across 10 jobs - one of which was Amazon from 2020-2023. I never once considered my “main source of income” my current job. My main source of income was my ability to get a job. I always stayed ready to look for a job at a moments notice and it has never taken me more than a month to get a job when I was looking. In fact, ten days after getting my “take severance package and leave…

>I never once considered my “main source of income” my current job. My main source of income was my ability to get a job.

Your "ability to get a job" is not what put money into your bank account twice a month. Your employer did.

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

#342

Post by pseudalopex »

andsoitis wrote: post #177
phoe-krk wrote: post #4

These aren't "job losses", these are "firings". They aren't unfortunate accidents of external origin that happened to them, they are conscious internal decisions to let people go.

> These aren't "job losses", these are "firings". While both terms mean someone no longer has a job, they differ in cause and implication. Firing is when employer terminates someone for cause, i.e. employee did something wrong or didn't meet expectations. Job loss is a broader term, simply means the person no longer has a job, for any reason, but typically layoffs, downsizing, restructuring, plant closure, or being f…

> Firing is when employer terminates someone for cause, i.e. employee did something wrong or didn't meet expectations.

This meaning is present in many people's minds. It is not present in many people's minds or any dictionary I saw ever.

to remove someone from their job, either because they have done something wrong or badly, or as a way of saving the cost of employing them[1]

The act or an instance of dismissing someone from a job.[2]

the action of forcing somebody to leave their job[3]

And so on.

[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fire

[2] https://www.thefreedictionary.com/firing

[3] https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...

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

#343

Post by coliveira »

phoe-krk wrote: post #4

These aren't "job losses", these are "firings". They aren't unfortunate accidents of external origin that happened to them, they are conscious internal decisions to let people go.

There is so much stupidity to unpack here. They say they need to use the opportunity provided by AI. However, what kind of opportunity is that requiring them to fire people in order to use it? Is AI making them more efficient or less efficient? If it's making more efficient, why they need to lay off all these people who are getting more efficient? So that other companies will pick up the workers they spend so much time to train on their systems, and replicate the same technologies elsewhere?

I think these companies have lost all their brains and there is a stupid AI system making bad decisions for them. I also fully expect these companies to lose their shirt to smarter companies in the next few years and decades.

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

#344

Post by DrScientist »

kristov wrote: post #93
martin-t wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's wild that you can legally work for a company, spend your limited life's time to build a part of it while not owning even a tiny bit of it (getting paid for unit of time - a finite resource) and then just get fired once you are not longer useful and that's the end of your income from the thing you built for you. All the while people who own it don't have to perform any kind of work and keep getting paid in perpet…

I agree with your sentiment, but the reason for the imbalance is risk. As an employee you don't have financial risk tied to the company, you get a regular paycheck. But if you are an investor you take a risk that the money you invest can one day just vanish with zero return. With Amazon obviously the risk of that is low. But for many new companies the risk is very high. Therefore the payoffs are also high, to attract…

If being a founder/VC was truly more risky than being an employee - you'd see more homeless VC's and founders than employees, not just more millionaires - ie a spread either side.

Sure sometimes founders and angel investors take big risks - however often the money invested is other people's money!

So if you have a VC funded start up - the VC has persuaded other people to give them money they will invest on their behalf, and while there is a strong alignment with upside and VC renumeration - they still charge management fees come win or lose - and risk is spread across the fund.

Founders stock options are often aligned with VC's such that often they win with certain exit scenarios when the rank and file with ordinary options do not.

Under those scenarios I'm not sure either the VC's or the founders are really taking much more risk than the employees - as I'm not sure you see that many homeless VC's.

The real point here is that people who take the initiative ( to set up a company for example ) set the rules, and also often configure the rules to favour themselves - it's as simple as that. Isn't pretending otherwise window dressing/self-justification from people taking advantage of other people's passiveness?

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

#345

Post by getpokedagain »

reassess_blind wrote: post #275
getpokedagain wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree with your sentiment, but the reason for the imbalance is risk. As an employee you don't have financial risk tied to the company, you get a regular paycheck. But if you are an investor you take a risk that the money you invest can one day just vanish with zero return. I would challenge you to change your perspective on this. The average employee is likely to be worse in the case of a failed company than an i…

Everything you said is true, but the relevant risk in the equation is objective risk, not relative risk.

I suppose. But in a world where upset people then act irrationally up to and including doing some murder I wonder if we start mapping burnt out individuals to a higher "cost" than their lost spending. What for example is the objective cost of Samuel Cassidy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_San_Jose_shooting#Perpetr...

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

#346

Post by taeric »

tayo42 wrote: post #324
taeric wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most all will answer whether or not it was "with cause" if someone calls them up, though? Specifically because they have to if the caller is about unemployment, no?

If your talking about employment verification, no they don't say why. Just confirm dates of employment. If you get fired you can lie about it. No one can find out.

I confess this surprises me. I didn't think they had to give specific details, but I thought they had to at least confirm whose decision it was for the termination.

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

#347

Post by getpokedagain »

kristov wrote: post #260
getpokedagain wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree with your sentiment, but the reason for the imbalance is risk. As an employee you don't have financial risk tied to the company, you get a regular paycheck. But if you are an investor you take a risk that the money you invest can one day just vanish with zero return. I would challenge you to change your perspective on this. The average employee is likely to be worse in the case of a failed company than an i…

Oh I agree with you. I don't live in the US, but in a country that has a very high progressive tax rate. I am taxed about 50% of my income currently. But I gladly pay it because I like to live in a safe country with strong government programs and a great healthcare system. It is also very difficult to fire an employee here. Companies generally have to pay people to leave, and this can be a year salary upwards. But I…

yea I did not want to assume but my take here is very biased upon my locale.

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

#348

Post by JCM9 »

alt227 wrote: post #333
foobarian wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Too little too late

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

#349

Post by taeric »

SoftTalker wrote: post #320
taeric wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most all will answer whether or not it was "with cause" if someone calls them up, though? Specifically because they have to if the caller is about unemployment, no?

I'm not in HR but as I understand it most companies will not say anything other than confirming dates of employment.

They won't confirm if the termination was the choice of the employee or the company? Doesn't that have implications for unemployment benefits?

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

#350

Post by D13Fd »

ctxc wrote: post #314
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…

Hard agree. Same for Siri. I don't get why they just don't do it. There are jailbreaks, making it talk trash and so on, but is that the majority of users? I doubt it.

I never use Siri except when driving. But when driving, it's really wonderful to have, since my car does not have car play.

As a daily user, it's clear they have been actively messing with Siri still, particularly in the last year. But the changes seem to mostly make it worse. It now misses "hey siri" half the time for no apparent reason. I feel like they just don't know what they want to do with it.

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