GREG BENSINGER
November 17, 2023 at 8:49 AM
(Reuters) -Amazon.com on Friday announced it is trimming jobs at its Alexa voice assistant unit, citing shifting business priorities and a greater focus on generative artificial intelligence.
The cuts affect several hundred employees working on Alexa, according to the email. A spokeswoman declined to elaborate on exactly how many were affected.
"We’re shifting some of our efforts to better align with our business priorities, and what we know matters most to customers - which includes maximizing our resources and efforts focused on generative AI," Daniel Rausch, vice president of Alexa and Fire TV, said in the email. "These shifts are leading us to discontinue some initiatives."
Amazon has been pulling back in a variety of divisions this month, including in its music and gaming divisions and some human resources roles.
While most of the jobs affected were in the devices division, a few were working on Alexa-related products in a different unit, a spokeswoman said. Many companies are shifting resources to generative AI, which can create software code and lengthy text responses from short prompts.
Alexa is a voice assistant that can be used to set timers, ask search queries, play music, or as a home automation hub.
Reuters reported in September that morale in the devices division had suffered over concerns about what some viewed as a weak product pipeline. In particular, people familiar with the matter pointed to the Alexa voice assistant, now nearly a decade old, as having failed to keep pace in the age of generative artificial intelligence.
Amazon said at the time that "to suggest that a few anecdotes paint a picture of reality for an organization as large and diverse as Devices and Services is inaccurate," and that it stood by its products.
Amazon has said its devices and services business is not profitable, without providing figures.
Only last month the device unit got a new chief, Panos Panay, who joined the company from Microsoft, replacing David Limp, a 13-year veteran who is leaving later this year to head Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket company. Panay had overseen development of the Surface tablet.
Amazon has struggled to generate any profits from Alexa, which many people use through Echo speakers or video screens. Most efforts to make money from it have centered on easing purchasing from Amazon.com.
The Seattle-based online retailer's voice assistant products compete with offerings from Alphabet and Apple.
Amazon has cut more than 27,000 jobs across the company over the past year, part of a wave of U.S. tech layoffs after the industry hired heavily people during the pandemic.
The latest cuts come even as Amazon reported third-quarter net income that far exceeded analyst estimates and forecast revenue in the year’s final quarter roughly in line with expectations. The fourth quarter is Amazon’s most crucial, as it includes holiday shopping.
In the email, Rausch said he remained optimistic about Alexa.
"Incorporating a new large language model into a voice-forward, personal AI, has been and continues to be an enormous scientific and engineering challenge," he wrote, using another term for generative AI.
(Reporting by Greg Bensinger in San Francisco; editing by Kenneth Li, Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)
ANNIE PALMER, CNBC
November 17, 2023 at
Amazon is dialing up the pressure on corporate employees who haven’t complied with the company’s return-to-office mandate.
Staffers who don’t adhere to the policy, which requires employees to be in the office at least three days a week, may not get promoted, according to posts on Amazon’s internal website that were viewed by CNBC.
“Managers own the promotion process, which means it is their responsibility to support your growth through regular conversations and stretch assignments, and to complete all the required inputs for a promotion,” one post says. “If your role is expected to work from the office 3+ days a week and you are not in compliance, your manager will be made aware and VP approval will be required.”
A separate post on Amazon’s internal career platform for employees says, “In accordance with Amazon’s overall approach to promotions, employees are expected to work from their office 3+ days/week if that is the requirement of their role.”
The post goes on to say that managers are working with Amazon’s human resources group to “monitor adherence” to the in-person work requirement, and “this will continue as we evaluate promotion readiness.”
Some details of the new guidance were previously reported by Business Insider.
Brad Glasser, an Amazon spokesperson, confirmed the announcement in an email.
“Promotions are one of the many ways we support employees’ growth and development, and there are a variety of factors we consider when determining an employee’s readiness for the next level,” Glasser told CNBC. “Like any company, we expect employees who are being considered for promotion to be in compliance with company guidelines and policies.”
Tensions have flared between Amazon and some of its roughly 350,000 corporate employees since the company began its return-to-office push. In May, the company began requiring that staffers work out of physical offices at least three days a week, shifting from a Covid-era policy that left it up to individual managers to decide how often team members should be present.
Following the mandate, a group of employees walked out in protest at the company’s Seattle headquarters. Staffers also criticized how Amazon handled the decision to lay off 27,000 people as part of job cuts that began last year.
Employees circulated an internal petition urging CEO Andy Jassy to drop the return-to-office requirement, but the company hasn’t budged. In recent months, Amazon informed some staffers they must relocate to central office hubs in different states if they want to keep their jobs, prompting some to quit, CNBC previously reported.
Amazon’s stance has changed multiple times since the start of the pandemic in 2020. At first, the company said it would return to an “office-centric culture as our baseline.” But as other tech companies leaned toward more flexible work arrangements, Amazon relaxed its position.
The company later announced the RTO mandate, which CEO Andy Jassy said would lead to a stronger company culture and collaboration between employees. Amazon has a remote work exception in place and considers requests on a case-by-case basis.
“Teams tend to be better connected to one another when they see each other in person more frequently,” Jassy said at the time. “There is something about being face-to-face with somebody, looking them in the eye, and seeing they’re fully immersed in whatever you’re discussing that bonds people together.”
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