Amazon cuts 16k jobs

Post by pardon_me » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 5:51 PM UTC

dragon-hn wrote: post #759

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and as part of the "class war", a majority of the lower classes decided to elect a billionaire whose first order of business was to implement giant tax cuts for the richest Americans while cutting programs like Medicaid and SNAP. Class war will never work in America because we're too stupid.

Correction: the class war already started long ago. Unfortunately the lower classes are not only getting trounced, they mostly don’t know the war is happening.

Post by johnnyanmac » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 7:08 PM UTC

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #988

SJC_Hacker wrote: post #818

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>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.

Post by apple4ever » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 7:21 AM UTC

hattmall wrote: post #832

booleandilemma wrote: post #784

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Actually I've worked at companies where management is exactly like this. Literally just status updates and asking when things are going to be finished. I have no respect for middle managers whatsoever. These people are a parasite on the industry.

Ok, Ok, I get the disdain for middle management. It's basically exactly like you described, but middle management didn't come about for no reason. There really is a value and the idea of automating it away with AI is extremely dubious. One could even argue that middle management is THE most critical role in corporations over a certain size. In that it is the glue that allows them to get to that size. But it's also wh…

Post by aprilthird2021 » Sun, Feb 01, 2026, 4:43 AM UTC

johnnyanmac wrote: post #992

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #989

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Euro…

>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. So we are talking H1Bs. Does that mean this small pool of "best foreign talent" also all happen to speak English and are able to communicate their ideas on a team? >the same applies to India and to China but because the number is small here we pick the small numbers from the rest…

Post by beedeebeedee » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 3:35 AM UTC

apical_dendrite wrote: post #864

WalterBright wrote: post #730

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The printing press also led to books changing from being something only rich people had to everyone having books. This also enabled the industrial revolution, as books made literacy worth having, newspapers, and became a great storehouse of knowledge. I.e. it created far, far more jobs than it destroyed.

One wonders if a German in 1600 would have cursed the invention of the printing press. The printing press accelerated the reformation, which led to over a century of bloody religious wars. Something like a third of the German population died as a result. From the perspective of 2025, the printing press was undoubtedly positive for humanity. But millions of people suffered.