Earlier quoted context omitted.
UBI will become at least as complicated as federal taxes. Perverse incentives will creep in.
Paying people to not work will never work.
It's working in the farm bills for a hundred years.
Amazon cuts 16k jobs
811–820 of 1001 posts
Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs
#812This 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…
Reminds me of the movie Office Space.
Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs
#813But Amazon says there shortage of skilled labor and is the highest user of H1B visas
https://h1bgrader.com/h1b-sponsors/amazon-dot-com-services-l...
Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs
#814Earlier 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…
Your suspicion is right; it is 100% AI-generated. https://www.pangram.com/history/8b593dcc-6a7d-496f-8c80-a588...
Oh wow, the guy used the word "versatility"... he even dared "narrative" and "just" - the latter one two times! Astonishing, does he have no shame copy pasting this obvious AI slop? It is obvious that no person in their right mind would utter such things!
Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs
#815Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm super sympathetic that losing your job sucks. I lost mine once. At the same time, what's the alternative? Progress happens. We no longer have liveries for holding horses nor horse shoe makers (not at the level we used to). We no longer have telephone operators. Making up jobs to keep people employed isn't a viable solution to me. Supporting them in some way (re-training, UBI, service work, ...) seems like the onl…
> Making up jobs to keep people employed isn't a viable solution to me. Supporting them in some way (re-training, UBI, service work, ...) seems like the only way forward. If this is what you think needs to happen and you live in the US, then you should be freaking out right now, not calmly posting takes like this. UBI is not a thing almost any current American politician is considering, and the overton window is spee…
> UBI is not a thing almost any current American politician is considering, and the overton window is speeding in the opposite direction.
That will change real quick if everyone loses their job to AI. But until then, yeah, it's not going to happen, and it shouldn't.
Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs
#816a16k anyone?
Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs
#817This 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 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 reporting that to people above him. Any manager whose job was this simple was on borrowed time anyway. I think the person was feeding you a story around the campfire to impress you. Real management work do…
I left amazon, in part, because of this realization: Much of management was exactly doing that. That was back in the BERT days and even then writing was on the wall.
Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs
#818Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 i…
>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.
I'm convinced that the code screen functions as a somewhat arbitrary filter/badge of honor.
FAANG and equivalents get tens of thousands of applicants and they cannot hire them all
If too many pass the code screen, they will just make it harder, even though the job hasn't gotten any more difficult.
Or they get failed at system design. Which is BS in many cases.
Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs
#819Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm super sympathetic that losing your job sucks. I lost mine once. At the same time, what's the alternative? Progress happens. We no longer have liveries for holding horses nor horse shoe makers (not at the level we used to). We no longer have telephone operators. Making up jobs to keep people employed isn't a viable solution to me. Supporting them in some way (re-training, UBI, service work, ...) seems like the onl…
> Making up jobs to keep people employed isn't a viable solution to me. It’s going to sound naive and stupid, but I think it somehow works. There are millions of jobs here in Japan that exist for the sake of existing. Government knows, people know, workers know as well. But everyone understands that the flipside also sucks. Sure, we can say we should optimize and people need to re-learn and etc and etc. But that’s no…
I was going to comment the same thing.
The prime example for me was always driving at night in Japan and coming across some grandma waving a traffic light for construction. On the surface, it's ridiculous that she's even there - but then again she has a job and can pay her bills (presumably).
Shit might be annoyingly inefficient over there, but it does just work.
Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs
#820Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that's how it works. It's not like coiling a spring it's more like starting to roll a ball down a hill, once you ruin it it keeps getting worse in a feedback loop as various systems feed on each other (populism, erosion of norms, etc).
I think you're grossly underestimating European naivete. You probably did fuck up your relationship with Canada though. They didn't seem happy about that one.
I'm talking more about intra-country dynamics, rather than inter-country. Momentum, good or bad, is a thing. It's not that mysterious, we can trace it to things that feed off each other, like the inflation populism loop, which makes civic institutions progressively worse over time. Turkey is a modern case study. This is the opposite of the "coiled spring" analogy, where if a country get worse it is bound to get better even stronger.