Amazon lays off hundreds in Alexa division | Hacker News Reader

Amazon lays off hundreds in Alexa division

seattletimes.com

6 pointsCrunchified10 comments

[dupe]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38305097

I know, now. I used search on this site for "Amazon" but results were obviously not complete enough to be helpful. Any advice on how not to duplicate, short of paging through the submissions to the nth degree?

I checked the guidelines and FAQs. I emailed the contact info but haven't heard their answer yet, either. Sigh.

This was my first submission, and I don't want to repeat this mistake!

"Alexa" would be a more specific search. "Amazon" and one or more of "jobs", "cuts", "lay", "layoff", etc., would also be useful.

Searching "amazon" alone, sorting by popularity, and limiting to the past 24 hours, turns up the prior submission as the first result:

<https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=last24h&page=0&prefix=fals...>

(For future readers, bound on today's date: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1700261998&dateRange=custom&...>)

Oh just filter by Last 24hr since it's fresh news. There's like 3-4 right at the top you'll notice. Not too difficult.

Amazon is cutting “several hundred” jobs in its Alexa division to focus more on generative AI, the company announced Friday. (Seattle Times)

Ouch. I guess there's no use for those employees elsewhere, just deadweight?

Amazon is uniquely ruthless towards their engineers. There is a philosophy among the company's leaders that if a department as a whole is not doing well, all the people who are a part of it are to blame.

Its usually leadership who are the problem if a whole department is failing. If they started firing from the top down they'd eventually reach competent people who stayed with the department out of loyalty or because they felt responsibile to hold things together. Seems such a waste to fire those people too.

Unfortunately most companies don't operate as a meritocracy. Leadership is almost never fired because it becomes a club/brotherhood. The first people who are fired when things go badly are those not in the club (individual contributors).

There are always exceptions, but they are rare. People are innately tribal and political.

Unintended consequence: reluctance to join a high-risk initiative because you'll likely be laid off if it fails?

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