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by sublinear 61 days ago
The table shows this better. All have just a single reported layoff "event" except Amazon which has three. Even a decade ago Amazon had many reports on Glassdoor and elsewhere of horrible middle management and employee churn.

All these layoffs seem to track better with longer-term decline than AI progress. One would otherwise expect the layoffs to reflect the multiple and much hyped "step change" improvements over the past few years. Instead the chart shows a sudden plateau starting a month ago. Probably when this last made the rounds somewhere else (maybe reddit? too lazy to search).

There's also a huge hole in media reporting regarding smaller businesses. That's where you'd expect AI to have the biggest impact. Instead we hear crickets.
1 comments
ianm218 61 days ago
> One would otherwise expect the layoffs to reflect the multiple and much hyped "step change" improvements over the past few years. Instead the chart shows a sudden plateau starting a month ago.

Can you clarify the theory here? So if there is a “step change” you expect companies to do layoffs all at once? How does this account for I.e. diffusion lag or companies deciding if it’s better to chase growth vs. capital efficiency?

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sublinear 61 days ago
Yes I would expect a lag, but we've been hearing hype with every model update about huge AI productivity improvements for years now.

Despite this, the layoffs are steady over that time with no such spikes. If the goal was ever to cut costs, payroll is never spared since it's too big to ignore. Chasing growth is unlikely when lending and investment is tight. Why invest in other tech companies when you can invest in AI?

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ianm218 60 days ago
I think your narratives are a bit mixed up. We went from science experiment ChatGpt 2022 to zero day finder that is too dangerous to release 4 years later. So whoever has been talking about progressive model updates has surely been correct?
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sublinear 60 days ago
Plenty of zero days have also been found with brute force and random fuzzing.

I'm not downplaying the LLMs we have now, but none of this got started in 2022 apart from the hype train.

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