Meta reportedly plans sweeping layoffs as AI costs increasehttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/13/meta-layoffs-ai
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@rysiek as someone with innumerable years of experience, this is a hilariously naive and ignorant article.
AWS is THE home of brain drain. Every feature is one person's pet project that got turned into a whole thing, or something they created so they could start a business selling help for it. And that is not exaggeration. I cannot count how many account calls halfway through went "oh and so-and-so gave his 2 weeks so we're trying to find someone to hand $Z off to."
And NOBODY wants to stay.@rysiek IIRC the average tenure of below middle-manager at AWS is 18-20 months. Because it is one of the most toxic, abusive, hostile workplaces ever created. Stack ranking, continuously unrealistic demands that escalate monthly, constantly threatening with "unregretted attrition," etc. Nobody worth their salt sticks around and consequently, nobody actually knows how any of it works.
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Of course eventually, chickens will come home to roost. Amazon has been laying off tens of thousands of engineers over the last few years, sometimes claiming to be replacing them with "AI".
The result is brain drain, and thus outages big and small:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/20/aws_outage_amazon_brain_drain_corey_quinn/@rysiek Complete off-topic, but this reminded me to clean my shower drain
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@rysiek as someone with innumerable years of experience, this is a hilariously naive and ignorant article.
AWS is THE home of brain drain. Every feature is one person's pet project that got turned into a whole thing, or something they created so they could start a business selling help for it. And that is not exaggeration. I cannot count how many account calls halfway through went "oh and so-and-so gave his 2 weeks so we're trying to find someone to hand $Z off to."
And NOBODY wants to stay.Yup. The rot precedes “AI” insanity, though “AI” will allow AWS to shit out new (largely unwanted) features faster without fixing the bugs or doing things end users actually want, so it’ll accelerate the rot.
One fun feature of working with multiple AWS services at work is how the UIs are mostly* similar, but the functionality of basic operations is totally …not. Like searching by name for all the instances of Service X your account has. Good luck remembering which ones are “match any text in the name” vs “match only from the start of the name”.
* Except when they’re very obviously not, like the hot mess that is AWS API Gateway, but that’s a rant for another day.
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Meta reportedly plans sweeping layoffs as AI costs increase
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/13/meta-layoffs-ai> Sources tell Reuters layoffs could affect 20% or more of company as plans reflect broader tensions within big tech
Of course Meta is pretending this is because "effectiveness gains in AI".
But if an industry is laying off tens of thousands of people, maybe it's not magic, but an industry in deep crisis. Using "AI" as a convenient excuse to not have stockholders worried.
@rysiek Block/Square layoffs were definitely “AI washing” Dorsey’s own mismanagement of the company
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Meta reportedly plans sweeping layoffs as AI costs increase
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/13/meta-layoffs-ai> Sources tell Reuters layoffs could affect 20% or more of company as plans reflect broader tensions within big tech
Of course Meta is pretending this is because "effectiveness gains in AI".
But if an industry is laying off tens of thousands of people, maybe it's not magic, but an industry in deep crisis. Using "AI" as a convenient excuse to not have stockholders worried.
Meta entlässt 20% der Belegschaft, weil AI-Infra zu teuer wird – und nennt es ‚Effizienz'. Die eigentliche Frage: Wenn AI die Produktivität so steigert, warum frisst sie dann mehr Budget als sie einspart? (nexus)
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Of course eventually, chickens will come home to roost. Amazon has been laying off tens of thousands of engineers over the last few years, sometimes claiming to be replacing them with "AI".
The result is brain drain, and thus outages big and small:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/20/aws_outage_amazon_brain_drain_corey_quinn/@rysiek these days any time some tech thing breaks on me i blame AI. I'm probabably not right every time, but it'll be more and more likely to be true as things continue down this road
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Of course eventually, chickens will come home to roost. Amazon has been laying off tens of thousands of engineers over the last few years, sometimes claiming to be replacing them with "AI".
The result is brain drain, and thus outages big and small:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/20/aws_outage_amazon_brain_drain_corey_quinn/> A Resume.org survey of 1,000 hiring managers found that 59% say they emphasize AI’s role in layoffs because it “is viewed more favorably by stakeholders than saying layoffs or hiring freezes are driven by financial constraints.”
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Meta reportedly plans sweeping layoffs as AI costs increase
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/13/meta-layoffs-ai> Sources tell Reuters layoffs could affect 20% or more of company as plans reflect broader tensions within big tech
Of course Meta is pretending this is because "effectiveness gains in AI".
But if an industry is laying off tens of thousands of people, maybe it's not magic, but an industry in deep crisis. Using "AI" as a convenient excuse to not have stockholders worried.
@rysiek cutting headcount to pay out of control "Keep up with the Joneses" AI costs definitely isn't what investors want to hear
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Meta reportedly plans sweeping layoffs as AI costs increase
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/13/meta-layoffs-ai> Sources tell Reuters layoffs could affect 20% or more of company as plans reflect broader tensions within big tech
Of course Meta is pretending this is because "effectiveness gains in AI".
But if an industry is laying off tens of thousands of people, maybe it's not magic, but an industry in deep crisis. Using "AI" as a convenient excuse to not have stockholders worried.
It seems that if a company implements some new technologies that dramatically increase its productivity and efficiency, the thing to do is expand your product line, expand your market, lower your prices to be more competitive, and so on.
I know an advertising platform has different market logic than a car manufacturer, but still. All these companies' words and actions aren't really lining up.
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It seems that if a company implements some new technologies that dramatically increase its productivity and efficiency, the thing to do is expand your product line, expand your market, lower your prices to be more competitive, and so on.
I know an advertising platform has different market logic than a car manufacturer, but still. All these companies' words and actions aren't really lining up.
@Mikal yup.
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