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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

#201

Post by treis »

jdhn wrote: post #180
softwaredoug wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Definitely use ours on a daily basis. Pause TV, play music, set timers, broadcast to other devices, set the thermostat, call people, and doorbell notifications. Nothing earth shattering or life changing but more useful than not.

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

#202

Post by rightbyte »

mr_gibbins wrote: post #108
jefftk wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

link?

Unpublished. It's still going through board approval. As/when it's put on my institution's open repository I'll post a link. Might be a few weeks though.

Be sure to put as a submit :)

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

#203

Post by rabuse »

koheripbal wrote: post #173
rabuse wrote: post #54

This is going to be a terrible holiday season for a lot of people.

Unemployment is still near historic lows.

I'm sure the thousands of people layed off and their families affected really care about that "record low unemployment".

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

#205

Post by kerkeslager »

nobodyandproud wrote: post #188
datavirtue wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Try government. Though I had no luck finding government jobs, because the red tape is ridiculous.

I have no direct experience with this, but my understanding from some friends who work in (US) government, is that it's an investment of time: you work through the initial red tape, and you get unparalleled job security.

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

#206

Post by ahepp »

djbusby wrote: post #89
mr_gibbins wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not strictly true. I examined a master's degree thesis last semester where the student proved conclusively that Alexa devices are periodically spamming bursts of data back to Amazon HQ even when not woken. Beyond a heartbeat, too - MBs of data, not KBs. No clear idea what that data is, though. There's at least a small chance it isn't benign.

So, mitmproxy that traffic and see what it is?

isn't the point of SSL that you can't do that (assuming the client is verifying certs, etc)?

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

#207

Post by ghaff »

nblgbg wrote: post #197
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 worked for Alexa before. If I remember correctly there are only 4 use cases of it like weather, smart devices, music and timers/alarms. There used to be 10k employees at that time of which 3k were working in music alone. There was definitely a bloat at that time. The third party ecosystem never caught up and there is no killer app for Alexa other than those 4 use cases. The API (slots/intents) is limited and hard t…

That describes me to a T. It's a convenient alarm in my bedroom and sometimes timer in the kitchen. Good for a cursory weather report if I don't need all the details. Sometimes play some music before going to sleep. Use it to turn my bedroom light on and off. That's about it.

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

#208

Post by nharada »

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 really only use my echo for a few things, but those things I do nearly daily and it provides enough value that I'd replace it if it broke. I don't need it to be an "everything device".

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

#209

Post by darkwizard42 »

serjester wrote: post #163
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…

If my business is valued at a million dollars and I take out a loan for a million, my business is now valued at 0. That’s basic accounting. Amazon had a net income of 14B last year - no one will let them borrow anything close to their market cap, much less 10X it. Edit: This assumes I spend my loan on payroll which is what the OP originally suggested.

I think you might be misunderstanding how liabilities and assets work. If your business is valued at 1 million already, it means your assets and liabilities net out to $1M. Taking out an additional loan for $1M just gives you $1M in assets AND $1M in liabilities (assuming this is before interest kicks in)... so your business valuation is actually neutral.

Now, if you squander the $1M and don't generate more than $1M+interest, your business will lose value... but you would have to lose $2M to then increase your liabilities to wipe out your original valuation

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

#210

Post by bolt7469 »

rabuse wrote: post #203
koheripbal wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unemployment is still near historic lows.

I'm sure the thousands of people layed off and their families affected really care about that "record low unemployment".

Those people received generous severance packages, on top of government unemployment benefits.
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