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Amazon cuts 16k jobs

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#661

Post by volkk »

tannerc wrote: post #651
volkk wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you read his original draft you can see how much of it was still carried over, as well as how his original writing conveys much of your same arguments that an AI wrote the final text. I don’t think your point is as strong as you believe it is. Lastly, I work directly with AI models and utilize all popular generators every single day, so I don’t know why you think you’re the expert here.

my point was that its AI slop. whether his original point is intact doesn't matter to me. the fact that you're now defensively doubling down and steering the conversation into a direction which serves you better is just cringe. i bet you're a pleasure to work with. c ya later nerd.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#662

Post by moshegramovsky »

lm28469 wrote: post #47
paxys wrote: post #4

Every large company is updating its standard layoffs announcement press release from "economic headwinds" to "AI".

10 days later: Amazon to hire 16 000 new workers in its new remote Indian campus

You don't have to shop at Amazon. I know I don't. Anymore.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#663

Post by lewisleclerc »

khazhoux wrote: post #249
ericmcer wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"moved wherever the company needed me and fixed problems that had been sitting untouched because no one else could untangle them." A screenshot later on shows he was a manager who spent his entire career in Houston. So... he didn't move and I associate "untangling difficult problems" as something an engineer should brag about not a manager. Reads like AI generated slop that doesn't correlate with the actual situation…

I took “moved wherever the company needed me” as hopping from troubled project to project to help fix. This is often what the most senior engineers do, and also the Manager label doesn’t necessarily mean much in this context. Not AI.

I thought it was fairly obvious too. We have a few of the most senior engineers being assigned to multiple critical initiatives just because they've led others successfully

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#664

Post by Aurornis »

embedding-shape wrote: post #626
Aurornis wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That person's pinned message shows that he started his campaign for Congress almost 2 months ago. He says he was laid off today. He's been Tweeting non-stop daily and appears to be working hard on his campaign. I don't think you can separate his active run for Congress from this layoff. Making an actual run for Congress is a huge time commitment and I don't see how it would be compatible with being an L7 manager at A…

> Making an actual run for Congress is a huge time commitment and I don't see how it would be compatible with being an L7 manager at Amazon. Does that matter? If people vote for him, he'll end up in Congress, regardless of "it matching" or not. The current president is a TV celebrity who ran a bunch of failed businesses, some middle manager from Amazon could surely be in Congress then?

Sorry, I should have been more clear. I meant that planning and running his campaign for Congress is incompatible with being in a demanding position at a FAANG company because campaigning and fundraising is a job in itself.

If you scroll through his timeline, he's been gaining publicity by releasing videos critical of Amazon, too. There's too much of a conflict of interest involved with letting someone like that remain in a high position within the company.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#665

Post by jujube3 »

SilverElfin wrote: post #284
VirusNewbie wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, then hire them on an O-1 visa. H1B is the problem as it creates a indentured servitude class that is going to work for less.

H1B workers cost more on average than permanent residents. That’s just based on salary. Once you account for the fees and legal costs and risks of the immigration process, H1B workers are way more expensive. Also, these visas can be transferred between companies. There’s no such thing as an indentured servitude class here - this is just part of the giant racist misinformation machine of the right, to make it seem lik…

None of what you're saying is related to what the parent post is saying at all. He's saying, if the immigrants are exceptional, they should be on an O-1 visa, which is specifically designed for exceptional people. If they're not exceptional, then why not hire an unemployed American worker instead?

H1B supposedly is designed to address "shortages", but there are no actual shortages.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#666

Post by aprilthird2021 »

learingsci wrote: post #562
echelon wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't we all want H1B rather than offshoring? That keeps the facilities here, the local employment options here, the growth here, the tax base here... We should want more smart people moving to this country. More business creation, more capital, more labor, more output. Immigration is total economic growth for America, non zero-sum. Offshoring is not only economic loss, but second order loss: we lose the capacity…

GDP matters very little when I’m homeless.

If you're homeless due to losing your job, then you'll be homeless whether your job goes overseas or to someone else in the US.

At least in the latter scenario the job is still here for you to get back one day

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#667

Post by aprilthird2021 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #464
dlahoda wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

would job hop allowance help?

Yes, but also salary minimum at top industry percentile to prevent use for wage suppression domestically. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45229180 (Top 40 H-1B employers) Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45223719 - September 2025 (526 comments) Job Listing Site Highlighting H-1B Positions So Americans Can Apply - https://news.ycombinator.com/ite…

Several of the links of yours are about PERM applications, not H1B.

I agree abusers (employers) should be put on he H1B visa blacklist which already exists.

H1B already mandates that employees be paid within the wage window of their peers. And anecdotally I know several who make more than their citizen peers in the same company same level

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#668

Post by aprilthird2021 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #444
echelon wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies want to cut costs. They will. If you don't bring more fungible labor into the US, the jobs will be offshored. Look at what just happened to film labor in 2022-2023. The industry was burgeoning off the heels of the streaming wars and ZIRP. Then the stikes happened. Amazon and Netflix took trained crews in the Eastern Europe bloc and leveraged tax deals and existing infra in Ireland and the UK. Film productio…

If you really think that companies are moving out of country because "there's not enough talent", despite having some of the more relaxed tax codes and most talented universities here: well, sure. That would be hopeless. It also sounds like you're buying snake oil. They had decades to off shore, and they chose not to. I don't think Ai in the near term (<15 years) is going to change that dial much. If they do leave, t…

> If you really think that companies are moving out of country because "there's not enough talent", despite having some of the more relaxed tax codes and most talented universities here

The US has a huge delta between its great universities and its mediocre ones. There are some smart and sharp kids everywhere in even the lowest ranked schools. But altogether the amount of people who can pass a code screen in the US is pretty low. If you ever interviewed people for a software position in a big tech firm, you'd realize this.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#669

Post by coredog64 »

echelon wrote: post #369
autokad wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not so sure on that. They raise inflation, home prices, etc. The locals see no real benefit except having to pay more for everything. While more taxes are collected, most of that goes to offsetting just some of the economic pain induced by the people living there. and it is in fact zero sum. every spot filled in university or company is a spot not taken by a local, as its obvious by the numbers, more local peopl…

Companies want to cut costs. They will. If you don't bring more fungible labor into the US, the jobs will be offshored. Look at what just happened to film labor in 2022-2023. The industry was burgeoning off the heels of the streaming wars and ZIRP. Then the stikes happened. Amazon and Netflix took trained crews in the Eastern Europe bloc and leveraged tax deals and existing infra in Ireland and the UK. Film productio…

> If you don't bring more fungible labor into the US, the jobs will be offshored.

Offshoring is not always a substitute for an employee chained to the job by a visa. I'm sure you can get a million and one anecdotes here on HN about the perils of working across timezones, cultures, and legal systems.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#670

Post by aprilthird2021 »

hintymad wrote: post #411
focusgroup0 wrote: post #37

>Amazon axes 16,000 American jobs as it ... relocates to a larger campus in India https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/10/amazon-to-invest-additiona...

People may have forgotten what happened back in early 2000s. Outsourcing was all the rage, and people in the US were really concerned. And then it came the explosive growth of internet, of mobile, of cloud, of social network, and etc. And then discussion died or at least dwindled enough that we stopped paying attention. It looks to me that massive outsource means that companies turn to focus on incremental improvemen…

Outsourcing happens when the economy forces companies to cut costs. When innovations return substantial growth, most companies don't think much about the costs. We have a rough economy, bad tariff policy, a weakening dollar, and immigration policy that's reducing the overall US population (and with it, spend in the economy). All those factors push companies to need to cut costs
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