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Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

bbc.com

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Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#321

Post by JustExAWS »

pruetj wrote: post #277
blenderob wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there were huge misses on areas like AI Honest question. What could they have possibly gained from AI? What did they miss out on by not getting into AI?

The only thing I can think of is if they had converted Alexa into a truly useful assistant and gotten people to sign up for a premium to it while everyone was still in awe of and having fun talking to LLMs. Even if they executed this perfectly though, I think all it would do is increase the burn rate related to Alexa. Plus there's no moat, everyone has a phone with more capable hardware that would be a better place f…

Bedrock is just hosting a bunch of different LLMs. It is just as capable as the third party LLMs it hosts. It hosts everything except for OpenAI and Gemini models as far as the popular ones. Even Nova, Amazon’s models, are good enough for the most part, cheaper and usually faster.

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#322

Post by malfist »

blenderob wrote: post #202
JCM9 wrote: post #185

To be clear, it’s worse. Read the press release carefully: 1. 14k was the net change in “corporate headcount” which is PR puffery speak saying they’re firing a lot more but when you net out folks let go slotting into open roles elsewhere the net change today would be a 14k reduction 2. It also says that “looking ahead” “we expect to… find additional places we can remove layers, increase ownership, and realize efficie…

> there were huge misses on areas like AI Honest question. What could they have possibly gained from AI? What did they miss out on by not getting into AI?

What if I told you that Amazon has spent more money on AI this year than any other company? On track to spend nearly 150B by the end of the year?

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#323

Post by cmiles8 »

JCM9 wrote: post #229
blenderob wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there were huge misses on areas like AI Honest question. What could they have possibly gained from AI? What did they miss out on by not getting into AI?

AWS is probably in last place among computing clouds on AI and the AI managed services from AWS are pretty second-rate. Amazon had Alexa (Echos) everywhere and that was teed up to knock it out of the park putting a real AI assistant in every home. Then the devices team totally blew it and did almost nothing to take advantage of that huge lead. Folks are now basically just throwing these things in the trash and the de…

Not sure why you’re being downvoted. This is spot on. Likely Amazon and AWS folks in denial of where they really are relative to the market’s bar at the moment.

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#324

Post by tayo42 »

taeric wrote: post #318
SoftTalker wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No employer is going to discuss reasons for a termination. Too much potential liability.

Most all will answer whether or not it was "with cause" if someone calls them up, though? Specifically because they have to if the caller is about unemployment, no?

If your talking about employment verification, no they don't say why. Just confirm dates of employment.

If you get fired you can lie about it. No one can find out.

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#325

Post by JustExAWS »

sgt101 wrote: post #214
blenderob wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there were huge misses on areas like AI Honest question. What could they have possibly gained from AI? What did they miss out on by not getting into AI?

They had the infrastructure and muscle to put a dent into Google Search and Microsoft Enterprise software... but instead they've ceeded to OpenAI and Anthropic. They had a bridgehead device of the type that OpenAI are struggling to create with Jonny Ive in Alexa... but nothing seems to be happening with Alexa now.

If Microsoft couldn’t compete with Google in search, how could Amazon? Even if the search were better, how do you get people to switch to it if Google is the default everywhere? Besides Alexa was losing billions when it was backed by the relatively cheap to run Amazon Lex pattern matching service. It would have lost more being backed by an LLM and it actually got worse from all indications.

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#327

Post by foobarian »

jvanderbot wrote: post #228
blenderob wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there were huge misses on areas like AI Honest question. What could they have possibly gained from AI? What did they miss out on by not getting into AI?

Have you noticed how bad their devices dept was gutted? I can easily imagine a proper AI system backing alexa, rolled out to all existing customers, which would potentially boost the viability of that whole product line. right now I have no idea what Alexa is for anymore. It pings me when a package arrives but so does my phone. I can't order from it, because it makes me open the app. I can manage a shopping list I gu…

The Alexa product as it is, is already lighting money on fire. Adding LLM integration to it would just be pouring gasoline on it; iirc inference is still not profitable even in easier sectors so Alexa would be a particularly bad place for it. (Even though it would be amazing UX, but I doubt enough people would pay the price it costs to break even).

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#328

Post by hibikir »

lexszero_ wrote: post #120
phoe-krk wrote: post #4

These aren't "job losses", these are "firings". They aren't unfortunate accidents of external origin that happened to them, they are conscious internal decisions to let people go.

"Letting go" belongs in the same HR phrasebook. They didn't ask permission to quit and the company were so generous to let them, the initiative was from the other side.

I thought the modern lingo was "impacted". So and so was impacted. Ten thousand employees were impacted. It avoids let go, but detaches as much as possible from the personal crisis.

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#329

Post by rs186 »

madeofpalk wrote: post #23

> This includes around 350,000 corporate workers, which include those in executive, managerial and sales roles, according to figures, external that Amazon submitted to the US government last year. I’m fairly ignorant to these things, but why does Amazon need 350k corporate employees? People losing jobs always sucks, but I can’t help but think that a company of this size inevitably has bloat that they do not need. At…

Have you counted how many links there are on Amazon.com and how many services there are on AWS? Don't forget MGM etc. Just some back-of-the-envelope maths will tell you how many employees are needed.

I would agree that Amazon in general and AWS should never be this big. But that does not equal "bloated".

Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

#330

Post by danaris »

sheepscreek wrote: post #179
axus wrote: post #62

Wasn't technology supposed to enable workers to do more, instead of doing the same with less?

I think we’re reaching the limits of what “more” can achieve esp. at Amazon’s scale. At some point, we will run out of people to sell things to. Then you look for low hanging “fruits” like this (cutting costs) instead of innovating and creating newer things (selling more). Also with less need for hiring and fewer people to manage - there’s an opportunity for companies to make their HR leaner. > Reuters said the job c…

> I think we’re reaching the limits of what “more” can achieve esp. at Amazon’s scale. At some point, we will run out of people to sell things to.

See, that's the problem with tying all these amazing advances in automation and labor-saving to a system beholden to capital: it only considers what can make it more profit, not what can make the world better.

I guarantee you there are many, many more things we can do with "more", at any scale, if you take the profit motive out of the equation (or even just put it second or third on the list).

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