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The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

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Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#101

Post by serge2k »

pyb wrote: post #65
amzn-336495 wrote: post #47

The story is that Amazon sacrifices engineers and others after every big project, success or failure. They have developed a weird human sacrifice culture. Fire phone? It was a failure implementing Bezos's wacky ideas. Engineers had to be purged to atone for it. Fire TV? Huge success but we don't want engineers getting any credit for it. Result: purge some engineers. Echo? Another success that now had to float all tho…

This startling quote is in the article : "Many of the people who helped create the Echo no longer work for Amazon..." As you say, it sounds like success gets punished at Amazon.

Probably more likely that a lot of people just wanted something different after years of working hard at lab.

Plus it's amazon, you stick around you are probably gonna end up doing oncall ops BS.

Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#102

Post by serge2k »

126throwaway126 wrote: post #69
amzn-336495 wrote: post #47

The story is that Amazon sacrifices engineers and others after every big project, success or failure. They have developed a weird human sacrifice culture. Fire phone? It was a failure implementing Bezos's wacky ideas. Engineers had to be purged to atone for it. Fire TV? Huge success but we don't want engineers getting any credit for it. Result: purge some engineers. Echo? Another success that now had to float all tho…

And Amazon has lots of tiny shell companies like Rawles LLC, fostering distrust and compartmentalization between product teams. Not a healthy work environment.

They are just extremely (ridiculously) secretive.

I remember at one point half of the team (up to director level I mean) knew about a project and the other half didn't. The VP and director had to argue hard to just get everyone in the damn loop. Then they made us sign extra stuff and reminded us that we could be fired or sued if we leaked anything blah blah blah.

Dysfunctional.

Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#103

Post by rootbear »

goshx wrote: post #59

I am waiting for the day when someone will sneak in those magic words into a TV commercial to wake up Echo, Siri, etc. Imagine like a DDoS caused by a TV commercial on Super Bowl. I have the Echo and sometimes it scares the * out of me when something on my TV sounds similar to "Alexa", like "a lexus".

Yeah, they call the activation word a "wake word", but I couldn't help but think of it as a "safe word". It needs to be something that you're only likely to say when you mean it. Which, to me, implies it should be customizable. I should be able to set it to whatever makes sense for me.

This issue comes up in science fiction stories, often set on spacecraft, where there is an AI that is spoken to. On Star Trek, they just said "Computer?" and that got it's attention. But that always seemed a little clunky to me. At first I thought the ship AI should have the same name as the ship, but I quickly realized that probably wouldn't work so well. Picard: "This is the USS Enterprise!" Computer: "Yes?" On Babylon 5, a Minbari character just called his ship, "ship", and in Alien, the ship was Mother, etc. I decided that if I ever wrote an SF story with a shipboard AI (or HAD a ship with a shipboard AI :) I would call it Maru-san.

Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#104

Post by grillvogel »

PascalsMugger wrote: post #63
spdustin wrote: post #50

I have the remote as an early adopter. It's fun to hide in another room and say into the remote "Simon says, hey kids, Kraft no longer makes Mac and cheese and now just makes carrots and ranch dressing." A moment passes. "Dad, Alexa just told us...!" My geek dad game is strong.

It's amazing to think about kids growing up with a wonder box in their house that tells them the answer to any question when they yell at it. It's like straight out of the fables or science fiction of the past. I hope this result in people generally having better bullshit detectors in the next generation, and not some other unintended side effect like making them enthralled to said wonder box.

I think a more likely result is that when confronted with a choice between what people see and what the computer tells them they will believe the computer.

Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#106

Post by _JamesA_ »

extra88 wrote: post #77
delecti wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The full echo happens to be on sale today, and the Echo Dot (which doesn't include the full speaker, only a smaller one, and you can plug it into your own) is about half the price, and does still have the always-on listening mode.

The Echo Dot is ~$90 but my understanding is to buy it you must A) be an Amazon Prime member and B) use the voice interface on an existing Amazon product to place the order (the Echo itself being an obvious example but I guess also the Fire Stick).

I was able to place an order for the Dot using the Amazon iOS app yesterday. I just tried again and it says "Available Exclusively from Alexa".

Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#107

Post by Zot95 »

stronglikedan wrote: post #15
paulcole wrote: post #5

"An e-commerce company wouldn’t seem like an obvious leader in [augmented reality]." Amazing that even today articles are still calling Amazon an e-commerce company. I wonder if this is an image Amazon actively cultivates or if it's just consistently lazy reporting?

How would you classify them? (genuinely curious) Everything they offer centers around consumerism, and separating your money from your wallet in exchange for some product or service. Even things that don't quite fit into that category (the tech stuff) are ultimately there to facilitate the purchasing of said goods and services.

Not trying to be pedantic, but isn't every business trying to separate "your money from your wallet in exchange for some product or service?" The only potential difference I could see (looking at it through this lens) is whether it's a consumer or business oriented company.

For what it's worth, I'd categorize Amazon as (principally) an eCommerce company.

Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#108

Post by runT1ME »

pyb wrote: post #95
runT1ME wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it more likely that after shipping a 'named' consumer product, many of those engineers rose in value a tremendous amount and rather than negotiate a raise they took a huge salary bump working for Apple/Google?

In my experience, companies are not that great at recognizing and rewarding achievement. So unfortunately, I'll stick to my cynical interpretation. Also, we're talking about dozens or even hundred of people moving on from Amazon here...

>In my experience, companies are not that great at recognizing and rewarding achievement.

Is your opinion the crazy stock grants that are happening right now at big tech companies not due to achievement and instead just political or random?

Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#109

Post by pyb »

runT1ME wrote: post #108
pyb wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, companies are not that great at recognizing and rewarding achievement. So unfortunately, I'll stick to my cynical interpretation. Also, we're talking about dozens or even hundred of people moving on from Amazon here...

>In my experience, companies are not that great at recognizing and rewarding achievement. Is your opinion the crazy stock grants that are happening right now at big tech companies not due to achievement and instead just political or random?

Google and Facebook offer largeish stock grants when you join the company, no ? Google is also known, to offer some kind of bonuses on merit, but that policy is seen as remarkable in tech.

I'd guess Amazon is more political and/or stingy than the above 2.

Anyway I was not referring to big tech specifically.

Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#110

Post by stronglikedan »

Zot95 wrote: post #107
stronglikedan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you classify them? (genuinely curious) Everything they offer centers around consumerism, and separating your money from your wallet in exchange for some product or service. Even things that don't quite fit into that category (the tech stuff) are ultimately there to facilitate the purchasing of said goods and services.

Not trying to be pedantic, but isn't every business trying to separate "your money from your wallet in exchange for some product or service?" The only potential difference I could see (looking at it through this lens) is whether it's a consumer or business oriented company. For what it's worth, I'd categorize Amazon as (principally) an eCommerce company.

I suppose that is so. I meant more in the sense that all of the tech they develop makes it easier for consumers to consume other products and services. Their tech isn't an "end game". I.e. They're not making things like smart fridges, rc cars, and etc. (Yet - unless that smart fridge allows you to order the products they sell and watch their streaming video in the kitchen.) All (maybe most?) of their tech products facilitate the purchase of the products made by other companies, whether it be allowing the consumer to purchase things easier, or enhancing their fulfillment process to get the products to the consumer faster. I guess I was more debating the fact that some like to classify them as a predominantly tech company, but I neglected to actually say that.
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