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Amazon cuts 16k jobs

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#471
post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bear in mind Nintendo has ~0.005% of the employees Amazon does

It's also ... Nintendo's share price was stagnant, Japanese business culture... FWIW, 8,000 (nintendo) / 1,600,000 (Amazon) is 0.005, so 0.5%.

Revenue per corporate employee are both ~1.5m/corp employee. I think it really comes down to how the company is managed and culture.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#472

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…

TBH the last 20-30 years was exactly like that but computers were eliminating other peoples jobs for really good profits for the investors and really good salaries for the workers doing the elimination. Before that people were eliminating blue colar workers with highly productive machines and industrial robots.

I don't see how eliminating your co-workers is any different. Software ate the world and now AI will eat the "software professionals".

When this is over, just like the rust belts there will be code belts where once highly valued software developers will be living in decaying neighborhoods and the politicians will be promising to create software jobs by banning AI.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should want open borders. Immigration is a significant net positive. But we can settle for controlled immigration with liberal limits. H1-B is stupid on its face. You're seriously telling me that this software engineering job absolutely cannot be filled by an American? That doesn't pass the laugh test.

> H1-B is stupid on its face. You're seriously telling me that this software engineering job absolutely cannot be filled by an American? That doesn't pass the laugh test. The job description is a senior full stack product developer fluent in all programming languages and frameworks. Salary is $70,000/year. Somehow they can never find Americans to fill those jobs. They'll go on Linkedin complaining that Americans are…

> Salary is $70,000/year

The lowest allowed limit for such a job is around $140k in areas like Seattle.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While reading the text, my mental AI alarm bells were going off, sent it all to pangram.com and it flags both the layoff post and his campaign website text as being 100% AI generated

Yikes, the "[contraction] just" phrases on that campaign website alone are really over the top. Horrendously inauthentic writing, whether it's AI or not: "wasn't just a job; it was a profound responsibility" "This isn't just a statistic; it's a sign that we need to re-evaluate how we support those who serve" "My experience isn't just about past success; it's about understanding the logistics, technology, and economic…

can someone even prove that this guy is real and not an AI persona at this point? like, at what point do we have AI agents running for govt with a warm meatsack acting on behalf of them?

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#475

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…

No offence, but this is 5% of what a middle manager does. We automated this task years back without LLMs too.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#476

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…

Oh dear. I wish middle management was simply "gathering information" from the decks below and reporting it to the bridge.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#477
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actual effective managers do much more than "gathering information from folks below him, distilling it down and reporting that to people above him."

> Actual effective managers do much more And how many managers are effective vs. only information funnels?

The bad ones tend not to be information funnels.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#478
post #289
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they just move their "headquarters" and the US part of the business will be a subsidiary. This is an old, and well tested strategy. E.g. Commodore International formally had its head office in The Bahamas, but the entire leadership team worked out of the US. You can try putting more constraints on what will get a company considerd a US company to catch those kinds of structures, but as you indirectly point out, th…

You don’t have to dig commodore from the grave, there are current-day examples of companies doing the same. Just to name one (even if it’s not American): Canonical. It (canonical) is registered in the isle of Man, a fairly known tax haven.

Also pretty much every company with a "headquarters" of some kind in Ireland, notoriously including Apple.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#479

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 probably still lives there
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