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Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

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Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#51
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about your thorium power plant but Tesla is giving you battery tech, and John Deere (~2B$ in R&D) is essentially giving you a fleet of robot farmers. These are not flying cars, but batteries that are 5 times cheaper in 10 years is impressive. I don't know much about farming but it looks like now, tractors do most of the job, and the guy in the cab is just checking to see if everything goes well. Farmers…

"Tesla Battery Tech" is called Panasonic and CATL Battery Tech

I am actually curious to know who does what?

Tesla and Panasonic and CATL are doing R&D on batteries. And Tesla and Panasonic are known long-term partners. So, how do they share the R&D? Do they research different topics (chemistry, manufacturing, etc...), does Tesla pays Panasonic to do the R&D? Directly or indirectly?

Tesla must have played a major role regarding battery technology. Other EV manufacturers too, but I suspect Tesla more than the others since they were the biggest player for quite a while (and still are by some metrics), have loads of money, and offer battery products other than cars.

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#53
post #28
post #2

I suspect its just a tax break related policy, ive been doing the same shit at US companies (still in EU), and some European companies (in EU) and the US one were the only one asking me to file reports for hours classified as R&D, maybe european ones have no incentive to do that Id say, considering that, and considering that for these corps taxes are lava, i’d go to look at incentives on taxes about R&D filing

Can confirm, filed some “R&D” hours at a company some years back that did software development but nothing I’d call “R&D”. They straight-up told us it was a requirement for some tax benefit or other. Like they did have us do it only on non-client work, but… it was not really R&D the way anyone means that.

My friend's company hires one of the big consulting firms every year to create a report of all their "innovative" research and development.

It's both hilarious and disheartening how much of a tax grift it is.

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#56
post #2

I suspect its just a tax break related policy, ive been doing the same shit at US companies (still in EU), and some European companies (in EU) and the US one were the only one asking me to file reports for hours classified as R&D, maybe european ones have no incentive to do that Id say, considering that, and considering that for these corps taxes are lava, i’d go to look at incentives on taxes about R&D filing

I have the opposite experience, I’m based in NL. Of the 2 EU companies I worked for they both asked to fill timesheets. And of the 2 US companies I worked for (also based in NL), none asked for timesheets.

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#58

These mega companies like Amazon are "too big to regulate." Our legal system hasn't scaled in response.

Regulation is as bad or worse. Even less accountability

Do you have any particular reason for saying so?

No regulation is bad or worse. Even less accountability.

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#59
post #3

I believe Amazon classifies all costs of software engineering under R&D.

In Australia we have a tax break that means 80% of all R&D costs are repaid by the government. Everything we can ever possibly classify as R&D is classified as R&D. If I take a dump on company time it's R&D because I'm a software dev and therefore thinking about developing stuff while I'm in there.

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#60
Maybe they need to spend even more to figure out how to show Adidas shoes when I search “Adidas shoes”. Seems that’s a really hard CS problem. Once they have that, maybe they can show products ordered by price when I select “Sort by price low to high”.
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