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

Amazon cuts 16k jobs

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

571–580 of 1001 posts

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#571

Post by volkk »

duckmysick wrote: post #335
volkk wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i've been using AI for as long as GPT has been out, so if you can't see through the rambling, overly complex to make you sound smarter kind of text, as well as the written patterns that are always used ad nauseam like "this thing isn't JUST this, it's THIS" -- i dunno how else to prove it to you. IYKYK.

> i dunno how else to prove it to you A prompt to generate similar output would be a good start.

how's this for your prompt, pal https://xcancel.com/PlumbNick/status/2016590894485385347#m

hopefully that's enough of a good start and a good end for this conversation

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#572

Post by buran77 »

candiddevmike wrote: post #524
Bhilai wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A few years into the company’s life, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin actually wondered whether Google needed any managers at all. In 2002 they experimented with a completely flat organization, eliminating engineering managers in an effort to break down barriers to rapid idea development and to replicate the collegial environment they’d enjoyed in graduate school. That experiment lasted only a few months: They r…

IMO, this could be solved by having a finance team with good workflows and a real human resources team/psychologist on staff that would handle all of the interpersonal drama. It's an interesting anecdote but I don't think it was that great of an attempt or structured well enough to work.

> this could be solved

With a USB stick and FTP. It's very easy to underestimate a problem when you've never encountered it or tried to tackle it in practice. Your shallow dismissal gives that away and brings no insight.

Human beings will always organically organize hierarchically. In a group one will have more initiative, one will be happier to be told what to do, etc. In the end informally you will end up with the same structure. And it's hell to deal with that when formally all have the same authority so none can override each other, but one guy just gathered enough support to do whatever he wants.

Do you think someone far away from everything you do will have a magic "workflow" that tells them what to do about the budget you requested, about the strategic decision you need, or about your conflicts, about who has to do the nice jobs or the shitty ones? And why would they have any say, they're not the boss.

Your logic is no better that those pretending today that a team of AI agents "with good workflows" can just replace all the programmers.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#573

Post by toraway »

volkk wrote: post #541
layer8 wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, these stylistic patterns existed before AI, and weren’t completely atypical. Maybe you’re using LLMs so much that you’re over-associating them with AI now. Or maybe the author is using LLMs so much that he’s unconsciously adopted some of the patterns in his own writing.

i think the much higher probability isn't that this guy wrote literally like an LLM before LLMs came out, but rather that he just used an LLM to write all of it. You can see even more of these examples directly on his campaign site.

And despite the downvotes, you were correct.

https://xcancel.com/PlumbNick/status/2016590894485385347#m

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#574

Post by chrysoprace »

mrtksn wrote: post #472
shartshooter wrote: post #144

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 th…

There might be a time when software developers become obsolete, and I don't pretend to know the future, but if today's models are anything to go by then it won't happen any time soon.

At the end of the day, there'll still be a need for highly skilled technical experts, whatever that job looks like.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#575

Post by watwut »

otikik wrote: post #532
watwut wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So what exactly are they supposed to say? Several options, pretty much all of them involve being actually cooperative rather then intentionally unhelpful. If Bill was part of some other team, point to that team or its leader. If he was in your team, you or leader can ask about what the person wants and move from there. Maybe you can actually answer the question. Maybe the proper reaction involves raising jira ticke…

You assume too much. I have seen it many times that when Bill leaves, the thing he was responsible for doesn't get picked up by anyone. It doesn't necessarily even mean that the organization is "abnormal". Perhaps the reason Bill was let go was because X was not considered business-critical any more.

> I have seen it many times that when Bill leaves, the thing he was responsible for doesn't get picked up by anyone.

I LITERALLY offered the "we are probably not going to do that anymore" option. In your situation, you can scratch the probably away. That answer is still actually helpful unlike the original answer.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#577

Post by volkk »

tannerc wrote: post #311
volkk wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you're a writer, and you're using GPT for so long and you can't see it as obvious, i dunno what to tell you at this point. i guess LLMs are trained particularly on this guy's writing.

So you have zero evidence to convey something you claim is “obvious”? Got it.

here's your evidence, tanner https://xcancel.com/PlumbNick/status/2016590894485385347#m

I'm not going to say i told you so, but you should utilize these tools more before you start arguing, especially when it's so goddamn obvious

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#578

Post by oblio »

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"…

Your comment is wildly out of context.

This specific company is now the 5th most profitable company on the planet and its FOSS projects are pitiful and 99% fully self serving.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#579

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

paxys wrote: post #283
shartshooter wrote: post #144

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…

Did you copy paste this from LinkedIn?

lol thank you I was trying to see if anyone else also read this with a raised eyebrow. “Yes so these ICs and other non-management staff are going to be reporting to this LLM and then magic and executives are informed of everything they need to know.”

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#580

Post by conductr »

unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #310
conductr wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is and always has been an eventuality. It's like fighting inertia or gravity to think otherwise. When the pay disparity is so massive, what is the incentive to hire US talent? I say that as an American that is concerned with our local economies and employment but that's not looking through rose colored glasses.

If a company is looking to offshore a function purely on the basis of cost differential, that’s a sure sign the company believes the function has been commoditized and is immune from competitive selection. That’s a specific slice of the workforce, not all of it.

How small can that slice be though?

It’s only really needed on true blue ocean innovation and where the company has to find the skills where they exist. If that’s the US, then sure they’ll continue some small slice of employment here for those projects. But as you said, a majority of software is a commodity now (has been for a long time, really). I don't feel like many companies are doing much innovative anymore and I feel people severely underestimate the talent present in other countries. So, even if you pointed to 10 innovation projects at Amazon then I could counter by saying even 85% of those teams could be in India.

Post reply on HN