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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

#91

Post by losteric »

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?

> 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?

That seems reasonable. Customers can order directly through the device ("Alexa, order some toilet paper"), that's low friction and lets Amazon rank options to their benefit. Plus regularly using Alexa keeps Amazon primed (no pun intended) in the customer's mind so next time they go online shopping they default to Amazon. Once you're using Alexa, there's an Apple effect encouraging adoption of other Amazon products through ease of use (Amazon Music, FireTV, Audible, etc). Amazon is also monetizing their products with ads, I'm sure that's part of the Alexa strategy as well.

Remains to be seen whether there is a "pull back" from smart devices that impacts the play. I was an early adopter of Alexa... at this point no one in my technical circle has proprietary "smart" home automation devices anymore, and the non-tech folks at best use Alexa to search in the Amazon app (mainly because they struggle with phone keyboards)

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

#92

Post by dmix »

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...

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

#93

Post by badpun »

kevmo wrote: post #46
mabbo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Having a microphone/speaker in people's houses seems like a great way to collect a ton of data & guide their behavior.

Smartphones and laptops are already that.

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

#95

Post by jefftk »

mr_gibbins wrote: post #67
mabbo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No security researcher has ever found proof that they are "always on" and recording everything people say. If they were, it would be front-page news and Amazon would have government investigations. The devices listen for their wake word before ever transmitting data to the cloud. (This is also because the sheer amount of bandwidth needed for always-on would be un-economical even for Amazon).

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.

link?

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

#96

Post by ripley12 »

bena wrote: post #32

This is weird because I'm in the middle of the interview process with a division of Amazon. Disclaimer: I have a job and haven't been actively looking, but recruiters will reach out and I'll usually go through the interview process if only to practice. And here we go: I got the initial email around the middle of September for one particular division. As I went through the initial assessment, that division "met their…

I've been in a similar situation recently. I passed the interview but the position I applied for (and was really interested in) is no longer open.

The nice thing is that interview results at Amazon are valid for 6 months; my understanding is that once you pass the interviews you essentially have a free ticket for 1 job (at an equivalent level) anywhere in Amazon. And so waiting until things open up in 2023 is an option.

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

#97

Post by bryanlarsen »

sokoloff wrote: post #58
mabbo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

When Amazon Music Unlimited was an attempted thing, that was a direct path to monetization that basically only happens if you have Alexa/Echo widely deployed. Otherwise, it seems a tenuous link to increasing sales in retail. (I say "was" because they recently rolled part of it out as a Prime benefit a couple of weeks ago, but I can't figure out the exact difference between unlimited and what's included in Prime [and…

The difference is that on Prime it's radio-style only. If you ask for a specific song you get a playlist of songs like the one you requested which may or may not include the song you asked for.

A massive limitation for some people, but it fits my usage.

It was perfect timing for me. Google just massively raised their prices for Youtube family so I was looking for alternatives.

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

#100

Post by bern4444 »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #86
colinmhayes wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1,500,000 includes all the hourly workers but my understanding is that the 10,000 is corporate. Still only 3% of corporate workers which is less than they pip every year

This is the second time in these comments I've seen this distinction held out as self-evidently meaningful. I sincerely do not understand, can someone please explain why laying off salaried workers matters but hourly ones does not?

It is the nature of contract work to be temporary. A full time employee is definitionally a stricter contract between employer and employee that is expected to continue for a longer period of time and represents a more binding commitment.

There is a meaningful distinction between the expected nature of the role and benefits of a contractor vs full time employee.

This isn't to say that laying off contractors doesn't matter, but its not unexpected or as good of a means to understand a company's outlook.

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