Tag: amazon

The company looked at some programmes that weren’t producing the returns it hoped, “an example of free shipping for all online grocery orders over $35 and changed them”….reports Asian Lite News

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has said that the e-commerce giant made “the very difficult decision” to eliminate about 27,000 corporate roles and like most leadership teams, it will continue to evaluate what “we’re seeing in our business and proceed adaptively”.

Addressing the analysts after declaring a robust March quarter result, Jassy said while the company has taken several actions to streamline costs, “we’ve been able to do so while still pursuing the key strategic long-term investments”.

“This past year has seen us do a fair bit of cost streamlining. In some cases, it led us to shuttering certain businesses like our physical bookstores, Forestar Stores, Amazon Fabric, Amazon Care and certain devices where we didn’t see a path to meaningful returns,” Jassy noted.

In other cases, the company looked at some programmes that weren’t producing the returns it hoped, “an example of free shipping for all online grocery orders over $35 and changed them”.

“It’s hard to predict that all of these will be successful but only one or two working would change our business over the long term. We have a lot of work in front of us,” said Amazon CEO.

For the first quarter of the year, Amazon’s worldwide net sales were $127.4 billion, up 9 per cent year-over-year. Amazon reported $4.8 billion in operating income and overall net income of $3.2 billion in the first quarter.

Amazon shares jumped more than 11 per cent after the results.

The company also saw strong engagement in its advertising services with revenue up 23 per cent year-over-year, excluding the impact from changes in foreign exchange rates.

In AWS, net sales were $21.4 billion in the first quarter, up 16 per cent year-over-year and representing an annualised sales run rate of more than $85 billion.

Inspired by the ChatGPT success, Amazon is now building a large language model (LLM) to power Alexa that’s much larger and much more “generalised and capable”, which is going to rapidly accelerate the vision of offering the world’s best personal assistant.

More ‘generalised & capable’ AI model to power Alexa

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that ChatGPT is a good example of an application that’s being built.

“We’ll build some of those applications ourselves. So for instance, we think one of the most compelling applications that are going to be built in generative AI have to do with making developers much more effective with coding assistance,” he noted during the company’s quarterly earnings call.

“I think there’s a significant business model underneath it,” he added.

The generative AI models have become bigger and better in the last couple of months, much more quickly. It really presents a remarkable opportunity to transform virtually every customer experience that exists and many that don’t exist.

“We’ve been investing in building our own large language models for several years, and we have a very large investment across the company,” said Jassy.

In AWS, the company has 25-plus machine learning services “where we have the broadest machine learning functionality and customer base by a fair bit”.

“It is deeply ingrained in our heritage,” the Amazon CEO added.

In AWS, the company has been working for several years on building customised machine learning chips.

Amazon Alexa also has millions of endpoints being used across entertainment and shopping and smart home and information and a lot of involvement from third-party ecosystem partners.

“I think when people often ask us about Alexa, what we often share is that if we were just building a smart speaker, it would be a much smaller investment. But we have a vision, which we have conviction about that we want to build the world’s best personal assistant,” said Jassy.

ALSO READ: Samsung suffers worst quarter in 14 years

The layoffs impacted both freshers and experienced employees at Amazon India offices in Bengaluru, Gurugram and other places…reports Asian Lite News

As Amazon announced to lay off 18,000 employees globally including nearly 1,000 in India, reports have surfaced that some of the impacted employees broke down and were left “crying in the office” when they heard they have been asked to go.

On Grapevine, a community app for Indian professionals, an Amazon India employee posted sad scenes at offices, including people crying after the announcement of layoffs.

“About 75 per cent of my team is gone. Although I’m in the remaining 25 per cent, I don’t feel motivated to work anymore. They are firing people in cabins. People are crying in the office,” posted the employee.

IANS could not independently verify the Grapevine user who was affected in Amazon layoffs.

Corporate Chat India also posted the screenshot of the user, saying “Atmosphere at Amazon India as layoffs take place”.

The layoffs impacted both freshers and experienced employees at Amazon India offices in Bengaluru, Gurugram and other places.

The company has mostly shut down businesses which are in early stages of development.

Last week, the Labour Commission Office in Pune sent a summon to Amazon regarding mass layoffs and voluntary separation policy.

The letter to the IT employees’ union asked for a joint discussion on January 17 over the alleged layoffs by the company in India.

“Livelihood of 1000s of employees and their families has now been made vulnerable. As per procedures laid down under the Industrial Dispute Act, the employer cannot, without prior permission from the appropriate government, layoff an employee featuring on the muster rolls of the establishment,” Harpreet Singh Saluja, President of employees’ union Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES), had said in a statement.

In November last year, Amazon issued a voluntary separation policy offer to its employees.

In the same month, the Union Labour Ministry summoned Amazon India to appear before the Deputy Chief Labour Commissioner in Bengaluru in connection with the alleged forced terminations by the company.

“You (Amazon) are therefore requested to attend this office with all relevant records in the matter either personally or through an authorised representative on the aforesaid date and time without fail,” read the Ministry’s notice.

The development comes after a complaint filed by the employee union NITES, in which it has alleged Amazon of violating labour laws.

In a letter to Union Labour Minister Bhupender Yadav, NITES claimed that Amazon staffers were removed forcefully from the company.

Earlier this month, Amazon confirmed it is laying off around 18,000 employees and several teams will be impacted, especially Amazon Stores along with People, Experience and Technology (PXT) organisations.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a statement that they were not done with the annual planning process as earlier mentioned, and “I expected there would be more role reductions in early 2023”.

ALSO READ: India on a mission to bridge skill gap

In September 2022, the company said it had around 1.5 million employees in total…reports Asian Lite News

Amazon on Thursday confirmed it is laying off around 18,000 employees and several teams will be impacted, especially Amazon Stores along with People, Experience and Technology (PXT) organisations.

The Amazon CEO said in a statement that they were not done with the annual planning process as earlier mentioned, and “I expected there would be more role reductions in early 2023”.

“We typically wait to communicate about these outcomes until we can speak with the people who are directly impacted. However, because one of our teammates leaked this information externally, we decided it was better to share this news earlier so you can hear the details directly from me,” said Jassy.

“We intend on communicating with impacted employees (or where applicable in Europe, with employee representative bodies) starting on January 18,” he added.

In November, reports surfaced that the e-commerce behemoth was aiming to cut its workforce by around 10,000.A

In September 2022, the company said it had around 1.5 million employees in total.

Amazon earlier admitted it was consolidating “some teams and programmes” in its hardware and services division, and Jassy had told workers that there would be “more role reductions as leaders continue to make adjustments” in 2023.

This makes Amazon’s reduction one of the largest from a tech giant yet.

Meta last year announced that it was laying off around 11,000 employees, while chip-maker Intel announced that they’re planning to make significant cuts throughout the year.

Google is also planning to lay off a significant number of employees in early 2023.

Jassy said that Amazon has weathered uncertain and difficult economies in the past, and will continue to do so.

“These changes will help us pursue our long-term opportunities with a stronger cost structure; however, I’m also optimistic that we’ll be inventive, resourceful, and scrappy in this time when we’re not hiring expansively and eliminating some roles,” said the Amazon CEO.

He said that the company is working to support those who are affected and are providing packages that include a separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, and external job placement support.

ALSO READ: Nadella, Modi discusses how India Stack can transform world