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Comment by throwawayxy1 | Hacker News Reader

Why would any company fire anybody if they are generating money for them?

To drive down wages. All tech companies firing thousands of people at the same time is a simple way to do this. Hire back in a year at much reduced salaries and benefits.

I cynically suspect this to be the case. As soon as one does it; the others have to follow to have any hope of controlling the tech salary bubble. They Don have to collude, just watch and match percentages.

> Why would any company fire anybody if they are generating money for them?

Amazon has been cutting teams that either could not justify their existence or worked in money-losing investments. Alexa was a very public project getting the axe.

I still don't understand why they axed Alexa. It doesn't make any sense to me in the context of the rest of their business.

> I still don't understand why they axed Alexa.

Alexa was described as "a colossal failure" which lost 10 billion dollars last year alone.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-co...

I don't really understand how that division could rack up $10 billion in losses in a single year either.

Because it’s an embarrassing product and Jassy doesn’t love it like Bezos.

They think these 18,000 aren’t helping making enough money to justify the costs.

There is an open window for tech companies to free-ride layoffs at the moment, that's what's happening. And they are taking this opportunity to its fullest.

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