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Amazon cuts 16k jobs

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#981

Post by hajile »

liveoneggs wrote: post #279
hajile wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Producing AI papers isn't the job requirement for 99.9% of STEM jobs. I won't talk about other fields, but American devs (regardless of race) tend to be much more passionate about computer science and (perhaps as a result) tend to be much better at their job than those from the big-name outsourcing countries. I was tasked with finding an Indian hire a while ago. I lost count of exactly how many people I had to interv…

tell us more about your racial-based hiring

We used to have contractors/employees from a bunch of different countries (India, EU, Eastern Europe, South America, etc). Our (largely Indian) tech management pushed very hard for us to offshore to India exclusively.

We had to let people go who had been great contributors. Some of them were actually CHEAPER than the Indians who replaced them. I tried very hard to keep one of these people and after much politics up and down the management chain ultimately got "yes, he's a proven coder who does great work and costs less than all our recent Indian hires, but you have to let him go anyway because he's not based in India". I've never encountered something like that and it tells me that money wasn't the primary driving factor at all.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#982

Post by rzgabriel »

mrandish wrote: post #829
tills13 wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in the U.S. right now, experience isn’t an asset, it’s a liability this is a HUGE red flag for this comment being written be AI. Before 2025, nobody talked like this.

> Before 2025, nobody talked like this. I enjoy writing posts online and I've been doing it since the days of BBSs and 300 baud modems, transitioning to Usenet and nowadays mostly just here on HN. People seem to find my posts generally informative and sometimes even mention they're well written. In school I always got good marks on creative and essay writing and in the early days of my startups I wrote some of the us…

You made me realize I got used to determining whether something was written by a LLM before reading stuff

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#983

Post by znpy »

vidarh wrote: post #875
znpy wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I didn't have to, but the reason for doing so was to point out that it is an old strategy.

> I didn't have to, but the reason for doing so was to point out that it is an old strategy.

Good point, i had not thought of that!

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#984

Post by greazy »

Aurornis wrote: post #519
dzonga wrote: post #375

Insightful Comment from X - https://xcancel.com/PlumbNick/status/2016500347053773198?s=2... I was an L7, I led global AI enablement. I built systems executives depended on, moved wherever the company needed me and fixed problems that had been sitting untouched because no one else could untangle them. And I was still cut. Here’s the part we’re all supposed to politely ignore: in the U.S. right now, experience isn’t an…

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…

Check the Twitter comments, he had an llm 'improve' his draft.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#985

Post by liveoneggs »

hajile wrote: post #981
liveoneggs wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tell us more about your racial-based hiring

We used to have contractors/employees from a bunch of different countries (India, EU, Eastern Europe, South America, etc). Our (largely Indian) tech management pushed very hard for us to offshore to India exclusively. We had to let people go who had been great contributors. Some of them were actually CHEAPER than the Indians who replaced them. I tried very hard to keep one of these people and after much politics up a…

I have also observed strong racial preference in american companies just as you describe -- indian, chinese, and korean management building almost exclusively same-race teams or outsourcing work to their home country, etc.

It's really gross but I'd never been in the position to be told explicitly to find a $whatever. That's illegal in the US but appears to be unenforced.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#986

Post by nswest23 »

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…

People have had jobs where their entire job function was figuring out how to outsource work overseas. When there's no one left to outsource then it's your turn. Tale as old as time.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#987

Post by aprilthird2021 »

dymk wrote: post #672
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Convenient how you absolve Amazon of responsibility. They were forced to do it!

They aren't the only company in their sector laying off. It stands to reason the economy as an outside factor is heavily involved

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#988

Post by aprilthird2021 »

SJC_Hacker wrote: post #818
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #668

Earlier 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 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/…

It's a necessary filter. Again, you need to interview candidates for these jobs to understand. Our industry doesn't have any qualifications, any exam to pass to certify, so there are just a ton of people who can't do the basic job but think they are qualified because we don't have a good way to screen people for this work.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#989

Post by aprilthird2021 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #699
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #668

Earlier 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 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. Like any other country, yes. >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. Compared to India? Or is it fine to lower standards of quality when you are paying an 8th of the cost and it turns out most peop…

H1Bs aren't paid 1/8 their counterparts in the same company.

And no, the same applies to India and to China but because the number is small here we pick the small numbers from the rest of the world as well. We don't only hire people from India and China in tech they are just more populous countries so their best workers are far more numerous.

Go to any FAANG in the US and you will see people on H1B from all over Europe, Africa, South America, etc. but Indians and Chinese are the largest group because they are the largest population countries with established pipelines from schools there to schools here to jobs here.

Re: Amazon cuts 16k jobs

#990

Post by aprilthird2021 »

learingsci wrote: post #891
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Based on the "Worst Case Housing Needs: 2025 Report to Congress" released in late 2025, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) found that foreign-born population growth accounted for approximately two-thirds of the increase in nationwide rental demand between 2021 and 2024.

Of course. In any growing services-based economy you will have foreign born population growth. If you eliminate that population growth, economic growth will decline with it.

If we were a growing manufacturing-based economy that wouldn't be the case as much.

I'd also recommend you read this. Many government reports since Trump took over and fired long standing professionals and hired loons are suspect: https://www.nashville.gov/sites/default/files/2025-12/2025_1...

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