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Amazon is said to plan to lay off thousands of employees

nytimes.com

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Re: Amazon is said to plan to lay off thousands of employees

#171

Post by insane_dreamer »

mabbo wrote: post #42
green-eclipse wrote: post #25

> In 2018, Echo and Alexa lost about $5 billion, said a person with knowledge of the finances. When Amazon introduced new devices this fall in an annual event, it was notably more restrained than past years when it had featured zany products like a sticky note printer and $1,000 home robot. $5B loss from one business line is a lot. Maybe this manner of investment inspired Zuck on the metaverse.

I just don't see the path to profitability for Alexa. Like, sure, it's neat, but how does it make any money? Do they sell the devices at a profit? Does usage of the devices lead to increased sales on Amazon.com? Are those sales that wouldn't have taken place on the app/website otherwise?

Alexa doesn't need to make money. It just needs to be another way to make it easier for people to buy from Amazon than from other websites.

Re: Amazon is said to plan to lay off thousands of employees

#172

Post by grogenaut »

dmix wrote: post #92

Did they also massively expand their staff during the pandemic like Twitter/FB did? Edit: looks like they grew headcount by 60% (+500,000 people) in 2020 and 23% (+310,000) in 2021. Today's announcement reduces headcount by 1% which is tiny compared to their growth. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/number...

Amazon brought on like 300-400k warehouse workers and customer service numbers would also move when that happens. They have a LOT of those workers compared to corporate and engineering. And they move those numbers a lot as well.

Re: Amazon is said to plan to lay off thousands of employees

#174

Post by thwayunion »

allisdust wrote: post #101

The recession depending on who you ask seem to be either mild or not happening. All the government indicators (recent inflation, gdp, jobs report) seem to paint a thriving economy. So why are these companies still shedding jobs? I'm starting to wonder if the tech industry is disproportionately impacted similar to dot com bubble from 2000.

1. Duration. A short and mild recession might be something you hold through. A decade of zero growth -- while technically "no recession for the next decade" -- is quite different, especially for companies (like tech) whose current employment levels are targeted toward growth.

2. Disparate impact. You can have low or no GDP decline while still seeing some sectors take massive short-term and long-term hits.

Re: Amazon is said to plan to lay off thousands of employees

#175

Post by readthenotes1 »

softwaredoug wrote: post #114
green-eclipse wrote: post #25

> In 2018, Echo and Alexa lost about $5 billion, said a person with knowledge of the finances. When Amazon introduced new devices this fall in an annual event, it was notably more restrained than past years when it had featured zany products like a sticky note printer and $1,000 home robot. $5B loss from one business line is a lot. Maybe this manner of investment inspired Zuck on the metaverse.

I never got the value of voice devices. In my experience you learn how to make them do 1-2 things. You learn a few patterns. But beyond that, even if they work 95% of the time, that 1 in 20 is annoying enough to make me not want to use it and just push a few buttons. Maybe case in point is using voice in the car. It should be the best, most obvious application. Yet aside from maybe texting, people want things like Ap…

I don't get the value either, but i sure do miss it when I'm away.

Re: Amazon is said to plan to lay off thousands of employees

#176

Post by cellis »

zackmorris wrote: post #119

Something I've never understood about layoffs is that large corporations have nearly unlimited borrowing power. Amazon's market cap is just over $1 trillion, so it could probably borrow up to ~10x or $10 trillion against that (almost half the US GDP). Isn't that enough money to keep employees through a downturn? The flip side is that individuals have almost no borrowing power. The bottom 40% of the US population has…

They absolutely certainly can not borrow 10 trillion USD. They do have massive revolving lines of credit (think billions, not even 10s of billions, much less trillions) but those come with conditions; it's not like a credit card at that level where you can just use it your whims. I don't even think the Federal government could borrow that amount overnight.

Re: Amazon is said to plan to lay off thousands of employees

#177

Post by wastedimage »

softwaredoug wrote: post #114
green-eclipse wrote: post #25

> In 2018, Echo and Alexa lost about $5 billion, said a person with knowledge of the finances. When Amazon introduced new devices this fall in an annual event, it was notably more restrained than past years when it had featured zany products like a sticky note printer and $1,000 home robot. $5B loss from one business line is a lot. Maybe this manner of investment inspired Zuck on the metaverse.

I never got the value of voice devices. In my experience you learn how to make them do 1-2 things. You learn a few patterns. But beyond that, even if they work 95% of the time, that 1 in 20 is annoying enough to make me not want to use it and just push a few buttons. Maybe case in point is using voice in the car. It should be the best, most obvious application. Yet aside from maybe texting, people want things like Ap…

I used to feel that way and I only had Siri devices since I had privacy concerns. Somehow I ended up with a free echo dot and it was significantly better. I got some smart lights since my kids could not remember to turn the lights off and now I have that on a privacy network associated with alexa and I've been impressed with the voice recognition. If you have a huge house being able to say 'alexa turn off the upstairs lights' or 'turn on the garage light' when you have a trash bag in your arms is pretty great.

Re: Amazon is said to plan to lay off thousands of employees

#178

Post by jpk2f2 »

datavirtue wrote: post #151
lbriner wrote: post #140

This is so completely normal in these industries that it is a non-headline. Companies that have so much cash they can employ 100K+ developers on top of goodness knows how many designers, PMs, POs etc. of course they hire and fire. They can afford to offer above-average conditions when the markets need it and everyone goes flocking there only to be surprised when their job is taken away at the next point the sharehold…

Wish I could figure out how to do an Ask HN for non-profit hiring. My previous attempts failed.

Non-profits do layoffs too, unfortunately. In some ways it's almost worse as there's less padding before they're losing money.

Re: Amazon is said to plan to lay off thousands of employees

#180

Post by jdhn »

softwaredoug wrote: post #114
green-eclipse wrote: post #25

> In 2018, Echo and Alexa lost about $5 billion, said a person with knowledge of the finances. When Amazon introduced new devices this fall in an annual event, it was notably more restrained than past years when it had featured zany products like a sticky note printer and $1,000 home robot. $5B loss from one business line is a lot. Maybe this manner of investment inspired Zuck on the metaverse.

I never got the value of voice devices. In my experience you learn how to make them do 1-2 things. You learn a few patterns. But beyond that, even if they work 95% of the time, that 1 in 20 is annoying enough to make me not want to use it and just push a few buttons. Maybe case in point is using voice in the car. It should be the best, most obvious application. Yet aside from maybe texting, people want things like Ap…

Voice devices are actually very handy for those with mobility impairments. That being said, I have yet to meet anybody who actually uses these voice assistants daily (other than the aforementioned people with mobility issues).
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