19
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2026
19 points (100.0% liked)
TechTakes
2416 readers
91 users here now
Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.
For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Amazon's latest round of 16k layoffs for AWS was called "Project Dawn" internally, and the public line is that the layoffs are because of increased AI use. AI has become useful, but as a way to conceal business failure. They're not cutting jobs because their financials are in the shitter, oh no, it's because they're just too amazing at being efficient. So efficient they sent the corporate fake condolences email before informing the people they're firing, referencing a blog post they hadn't yet published.
It's Schrodinger's Success. You can neither prove nor disprove the effects of AI on the decision, or if the layoffs are an indication of good management or fundamental mismanagement. And the media buys into it with headlines like "Amazon axes 16,000 jobs as it pushes AI and efficiency" that are distinctly ambivalent on how 16k people could possibly have been redundant in a tech company that's supposed to be a beacon of automation.
Their financials are not even in the shitter! except insofar as their increased AI capex isn't delivering returns, so they need to massage the balance sheet by doing rolling layoffs to stop the feral hogs from clamoring and stampeding on the next quarterly earnings call.
In retrospect the word quarterlies is what I should have chosen for accuracy, but I'm glad I didn't purely because I wouldn't have then had your vivid hog simile.