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I realize it’s easy to pattern-match this news to 'hiring in India vs. firing in US' given the current climate, but having worked at Amazon India for 4 years, I

by kburman 9mo ago

I realize it’s easy to pattern-match this news to 'hiring in India vs. firing in US' given the current climate, but having worked at Amazon India for 4 years, I can tell you the cuts happen there too. Amazon has a history of annual restructuring that hits every region. It isn't necessarily a direct relocation strategy so much as their standard operational churn. The 'efficiency' cuts are happening globally, India included.

dmix 9mo ago
Amazon also employs 1.5 million people globally, 350k of which are in corporate. These 16k were corporate. Still sucks for everyone involved, I know a corporate sales guy who got laid off Microsoft and it disrupted his life pretty seriously. As Stalin says one's a tragedy, a millions a statistic.
- darth_avocado 9mo ago
  Since the HN reaction to layoffs almost always is about blaming H1B, here’s a few more things the headline misses: 1. Cuts were global 2. Cuts in US also include H1B employees 3. 16000 roles are corporate roles, not just tech related, H1B program is not generally utilized for those roles 4. Expansion in India is not just tech. Amazon is a big retailer in India. Understandably if you’re seeing revenue growth in India, you will grow corporate presence in India. If Walmart becomes a massive retailer in EU, it will hire EU nationals in EU. That’s not shipping jobs to EU.
  - echelon 9mo ago
    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 over an extended time frame.
    - autokad 9mo ago
      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 people are not getting admitted into CS programs nor are they being hired. its 100% zero sum when we are looking at these numbers and %s.
      - Analemma_ 9mo ago
        You could use this exact argument to say nobody should ever have children-- children also raise inflation, home prices, etc. And the majority of your property taxes go specifically towards programs which would be unneeded if nobody had any children. The fact that naive anti-immigration arguments can be copy-pasted unchanged into arguments against having children is a sign that maybe those arguments are stupid. To understand why, you might start with the fact that immigrants also purchase goods and services, and hence pay the salaries of the ~70% of people in this country employed in some way or another by consumer spending.
        mc32 9mo ago
        Children are future taxpayers the majority with parents who were not a tax burden --net positive tax contribution. People without Children benefit from the taxes paid by the children of people who rear children -i.e. people without children aren't "cashing out" their tax contributed retirement --that contribution went to other retirees.
        deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
        repstosb 9mo ago
        And citizens benefit from the taxes paid by non-citizen immigrants, whether documented or undocumented. Not just income and payroll taxes that might be dodged by under-the-table arrangements, but sales taxes, property taxes (perhaps paid indirectly via rent to a taxpaying landlord), the consumer share (nearly 100%) of tariffs, etc. And much of that tax base is spent on benefits and services that are not accessible to taxpaying non-citizens. So from that standpoint, immigrants are a /better/ economic deal for the public than children are. At the end of the day, though, it shouldn't matter where people were born if they're contributing to society, and the grandparent post is 100% correct that the whole debate is stupid.
  - FilosofumRex 9mo ago
    > 1. Cuts were global 2. Cuts in US also include H1B employees Hell no, Amazon has been a top 10 filer of H1-B LCAs for decades. The only H1-Bs being laid off, if any, are the older ones (over 39) to be replaced with cheaper models https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS8LNhxJq9Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS8LNhxJq9Q
- belter 9mo ago
  Many Software Engineers gone. At L6 and L7 level. Details here: https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonemployees/ https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonemployees/
yojat661 9mo ago
The parent comment is obviously cherry picking news and trying to push an agenda. Uk investment: https://www.aboutamazon.co.uk/news/job-creation-and-investment/amazon-40-billion-uk-investment https://www.aboutamazon.co.uk/news/job-creation-and-investme... Us investment: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-invest-50-billion-ai https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-invest-50-billion-ai
- stuaxo 9mo ago
  The US investment link is broken, and most of the UK jobs are in "fullfillment", some of the least fullfilling jobs - piss bottles all round.
  - cobolcomesback 9mo ago
    And the original link about investment in India is also about fulfillment jobs and even worse, “investing in AI”, aka building data centers, which contribute essentially no jobs at all.
- no_wizard 9mo ago
  The AI investment is largely earmarked for data centers. Low staff but expensive because the hardware is currently very expensive. It's not equivalent in the least. They aren't expanding headcount by 20K, they're building more expensive AI tailored servers
cahgnifop 9mo ago
[flagged]
locusofself 9mo ago
Sure, but at some point in the past, "Amazon India" was not a thing. Nor was "Microsoft India" and so forth. Surely you can understand what it feels like to be an American tech worker in a super high cost of living area, looking at reduction in headcount and continual offshoring of jobs as time goes by. I live in Seattle area, work at one of these big companies, I work with people in India almost every day and have been to India three times on business. When parts of my department's work was allocated to a new team in India, of course I was nervous about that.
- kburman 9mo ago
  I get the fear, but look at it from the investor's perspective. The US market is tapped out, Amazon is already everywhere it can be. Amazon isn't expanding in India out of love for the country or a desire to see it grow. They are doing it because Wall Street demands infinite growth every single year. Amazon India went from zero to a market leader in a decade not because of charity, but because that is where the new money is. To keep the valuation climbing (which sustains everyone's RSUs), they have to capture these emerging markets. If they don't, the stock stagnates, and the compensation model for US tech workers falls apart.
  - pm90 9mo ago
    They can capture the market without moving the workforce there. Meta/Instagram/WA have dominated Indian market for a decade now. It seems like this is pure labor arbitrage. Growth is gone so the only way to increase profits is by cutting costs, with labor force being the top line item.
    - kburman 9mo ago
      You are describing a colonial model, extract all the wealth while investing nothing in the local economy. That era is over. If anything, Meta is the anomaly, not the role model. They should be required to invest more given their dominance, rather than being praised for extracting maximum value with minimum local footprint. Regulators will likely close that gap eventually.
ActionHank 9mo ago
It not pattern matching, it’s literally two things happening at the same time… in a business… that strictly budgets everything… It’s not a pattern it’s a plan.

by kburman 9mo ago

dmix 9mo ago

Amazon also employs 1.5 million people globally, 350k of which are in corporate. These 16k were corporate. Still sucks for everyone involved, I know a corporate sales guy who got laid off Microsoft and it disrupted his life pretty seriously. As Stalin says one's a tragedy, a millions a statistic.

darth_avocado 9mo ago
Since the HN reaction to layoffs almost always is about blaming H1B, here’s a few more things the headline misses: 1. Cuts were global 2. Cuts in US also include H1B employees 3. 16000 roles are corporate roles, not just tech related, H1B program is not generally utilized for those roles 4. Expansion in India is not just tech. Amazon is a big retailer in India. Understandably if you’re seeing revenue growth in India, you will grow corporate presence in India. If Walmart becomes a massive retailer in EU, it will hire EU nationals in EU. That’s not shipping jobs to EU.
- echelon 9mo ago
  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 over an extended time frame.
  - autokad 9mo ago
    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 people are not getting admitted into CS programs nor are they being hired. its 100% zero sum when we are looking at these numbers and %s.
    - Analemma_ 9mo ago
      You could use this exact argument to say nobody should ever have children-- children also raise inflation, home prices, etc. And the majority of your property taxes go specifically towards programs which would be unneeded if nobody had any children. The fact that naive anti-immigration arguments can be copy-pasted unchanged into arguments against having children is a sign that maybe those arguments are stupid. To understand why, you might start with the fact that immigrants also purchase goods and services, and hence pay the salaries of the ~70% of people in this country employed in some way or another by consumer spending.
      - mc32 9mo ago
        Children are future taxpayers the majority with parents who were not a tax burden --net positive tax contribution. People without Children benefit from the taxes paid by the children of people who rear children -i.e. people without children aren't "cashing out" their tax contributed retirement --that contribution went to other retirees.
        deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
        repstosb 9mo ago
        And citizens benefit from the taxes paid by non-citizen immigrants, whether documented or undocumented. Not just income and payroll taxes that might be dodged by under-the-table arrangements, but sales taxes, property taxes (perhaps paid indirectly via rent to a taxpaying landlord), the consumer share (nearly 100%) of tariffs, etc. And much of that tax base is spent on benefits and services that are not accessible to taxpaying non-citizens. So from that standpoint, immigrants are a /better/ economic deal for the public than children are. At the end of the day, though, it shouldn't matter where people were born if they're contributing to society, and the grandparent post is 100% correct that the whole debate is stupid.
- FilosofumRex 9mo ago
  > 1. Cuts were global 2. Cuts in US also include H1B employees Hell no, Amazon has been a top 10 filer of H1-B LCAs for decades. The only H1-Bs being laid off, if any, are the older ones (over 39) to be replaced with cheaper models https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS8LNhxJq9Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS8LNhxJq9Q
belter 9mo ago
Many Software Engineers gone. At L6 and L7 level. Details here: https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonemployees/ https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonemployees/

yojat661 9mo ago

The parent comment is obviously cherry picking news and trying to push an agenda. Uk investment: https://www.aboutamazon.co.uk/news/job-creation-and-investment/amazon-40-billion-uk-investment https://www.aboutamazon.co.uk/news/job-creation-and-investme... Us investment: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-invest-50-billion-ai https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-invest-50-billion-ai

stuaxo 9mo ago
The US investment link is broken, and most of the UK jobs are in "fullfillment", some of the least fullfilling jobs - piss bottles all round.
- cobolcomesback 9mo ago
  And the original link about investment in India is also about fulfillment jobs and even worse, “investing in AI”, aka building data centers, which contribute essentially no jobs at all.
no_wizard 9mo ago
The AI investment is largely earmarked for data centers. Low staff but expensive because the hardware is currently very expensive. It's not equivalent in the least. They aren't expanding headcount by 20K, they're building more expensive AI tailored servers

cahgnifop 9mo ago

[flagged]

locusofself 9mo ago

Sure, but at some point in the past, "Amazon India" was not a thing. Nor was "Microsoft India" and so forth. Surely you can understand what it feels like to be an American tech worker in a super high cost of living area, looking at reduction in headcount and continual offshoring of jobs as time goes by. I live in Seattle area, work at one of these big companies, I work with people in India almost every day and have been to India three times on business. When parts of my department's work was allocated to a new team in India, of course I was nervous about that.

kburman 9mo ago
I get the fear, but look at it from the investor's perspective. The US market is tapped out, Amazon is already everywhere it can be. Amazon isn't expanding in India out of love for the country or a desire to see it grow. They are doing it because Wall Street demands infinite growth every single year. Amazon India went from zero to a market leader in a decade not because of charity, but because that is where the new money is. To keep the valuation climbing (which sustains everyone's RSUs), they have to capture these emerging markets. If they don't, the stock stagnates, and the compensation model for US tech workers falls apart.
- pm90 9mo ago
  They can capture the market without moving the workforce there. Meta/Instagram/WA have dominated Indian market for a decade now. It seems like this is pure labor arbitrage. Growth is gone so the only way to increase profits is by cutting costs, with labor force being the top line item.
  - kburman 9mo ago
    You are describing a colonial model, extract all the wealth while investing nothing in the local economy. That era is over. If anything, Meta is the anomaly, not the role model. They should be required to invest more given their dominance, rather than being praised for extracting maximum value with minimum local footprint. Regulators will likely close that gap eventually.

ActionHank 9mo ago

It not pattern matching, it’s literally two things happening at the same time… in a business… that strictly budgets everything… It’s not a pattern it’s a plan.