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Amazon is cutting 5% of the workforce at its Audible division, according to an internal email obtained by Business Insider. On Thursday, Audible's CEO Bob Carrigan wrote an email to his team notifying the "tough decision to reduce roles within our organization," the email said. The job cuts follow broader layoffs at other parts of Amazon this week. Internal messages suggest more job cuts in Amazon Pay and marketing roles, as BI previously reported . Amazon acquired Audible, which provides audiobooks and podcasts, for roughly $300 million in 2008.
Persons: Bob Carrigan, Carrigan, we've, It's, Eugene Kim Organizations: Service, Business, Amazon, MGM Studios, Pay, Global
"Q should be more polished, given how far behind we are," one of the Amazon employees told BI. An Amazon spokesperson said Q is not based on a single AI model, and its launch followed standard operating procedure. They said Q primarily used Claude Instant 1.2, a cheaper, lighter, and faster version of the AI model that was released in August. More approachable, but too simpleCurrently, Amazon Q is only offered in preview mode to select customers. Some AWS employees, however, say it feels like the company is in a mad dash to release new products, even if they are subpar.
Persons: , Q, That's, Anthropic's Claude, It's, Google's Bard, Claude, Andy Jassy, Richard Brian Bedrock, Dario Amodei, Anthropic, Randall Hunt, Hunt, Corey Quinn, Quinn, Amazon's Trainium, Adam Selipsky, Selipsky, Amazon's Organizations: Service, Amazon, Business, Microsoft, Google, Claude, AWS's, Oracle, Duckbill, Nvidia, AWS
Many Nvidia employees have become incredibly rich after the company's stock is up by about 1,200% over the past five years. Nvidia employees are also rarely put on performance-improvement plans, unlike some of its competitors, such as Amazon . Despite a growing number of companies launching their own in-house chips, Nvidia employees say they don't feel the competitive pressure yet. Three Nvidia employees, however, told BI that those chips never came up in customer conversations because, in their view, of Nvidia's superior performance. In other ways, Nvidia employees haven't let their riches go to their heads.
Persons: , It's, Jensen Huang, Huang, he's, Jim Herd, Herd Freed Hartz, Herd, we're, Glassdoor, He's Organizations: Service, Nvidia, Business, AMD, Intel, Big Tech, Microsoft, Amazon, Employees, BI, Lamborghini, Meta Locations: Silicon
Just nine months after closing its deal to acquire One Medical, Amazon is exerting more control over the primary care provider's employee pay. Prior to the Amazon acquisition, One Medical gave stock grants without baking in any growth assumptions. Like One Medical, Amazon reinforces this through its competitive total compensation program which, for corporate employees, typically includes base pay and restricted stock units (RSUs). As One Medical is now part of Amazon and can no longer grant employees One Medical stock, we are transitioning employees to Amazon's stock-based compensation model. Amazon's pay policy has long been a source of frustration for many employees.
Persons: Christine Morehead, Morehead, Dawn Brun, Slack Organizations: Business, Medical, BI, Amazon, Amazon's
Some Amazon Web Services employees are concerned about a large number of departures among its senior engineers. At last month's internal staff meeting for AWS, VP of infrastructure services Prasad Kalyanaraman answered an employee question about turnover among senior engineers, according to a transcript of the meeting obtained by Business Insider. It is one of the many challenges AWS employees are currently dealing with, alongside slowing growth and a more bureaucratic culture, as BI previously reported . As we've previously told Insider, attrition among AWS employees has declined in recent years and to suggest anything otherwise is inaccurate. Amazon unveiled Amazon Q this week, an AI chatbot for businesses, and previously launched CodeWhisperer, a coding assistant for developers.
Persons: Prasad Kalyanaraman, Kalyanaraman, Rob Munoz, we've, Prasad, Munoz, Peter DeSantis, DeSantis, Charlie Bell, Rachel Thornton, Chris Vonderhaar Organizations: Web Services, Business, Amazon's, AWS
AWS's growth rate has slowed and its SMB sales unit will likely miss 2023 targets, sources say. AWS built a lead in cloud computing by better catering to startups and small businesses than rivals. The Amazon Web Services team responsible for selling services to startups and small businesses is struggling to meet its 2023 sales goals, two people with direct knowledge of the situation tell Business Insider. One believes the SMB team will surely miss its targets and said managers are facing mounting pressure to improve their numbers. Both people requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press.
Organizations: Web Services, AWS, Business
AdvertisementIn today's big story, we're looking at the growing tension at AWS with rising employee burnout. Just like OpenAI's ChatGPT or Google's Bard, Amazon Q is a generative AI chatbot users can talk to like a human. Amazon Web Services, which developed Amazon Q, announced the new product under the fanfare of its annual event in Las Vegas, AWS re:Invent. Business Insider's Eugene Kim, our resident Amazon expert, has a report on the growing tension and burnout among AWS employees. Jon Krause for InsiderThe burnout at AWS reminds me of another company at the top of its field facing turmoil: Goldman Sachs.
Persons: , you've, Taylor, Pena Popo, Noah Berger, Bard, Insider's Eugene Kim, ChatGPT, Jon Krause, Goldman Sachs, Goldman, David Solomon, haven't, BI's Dakin Campbell, Bethany McLean, Goldman aren't, Goldman's, Sylvain Gaboury, Patrick McMullan, Slaven, The New York Times Elon Musk, Tesla, They've, Joe Santagato, Elon Musk, Drazen, Dan DeFrancesco, Naga Siu, Hallam Bullock, Lisa Ryan Organizations: Spotify, Getty, Web Services, Microsoft, Goldman, Slaven, The New York Times, Amazon, Business, American Express, Federal, Paris, Paralympic, Kroger, Dell Locations: Las Vegas, Austin , Texas, New York City, San Diego, London, New York
For Amazon, AWS is more important than ever. Targets missedAWS is falling short of reaching sales goals in its startups and small-business segments, two employees told BI. Burnout and attritionSeveral AWS employees also pointed to high turnover as a major point of concern. AWS employees told BI it still remains to be seen how all these changes will manifest in the months to come. "The most significant single sentiment we feel is uncertainty," one of the AWS employees told BI.
Persons: Matt Garman, Garman, Mark Shmulik, Bernstein, Rob Munoz, Munoz, Charlie Bell, Rachel Thornton, Chris Vonderhaar, Peter DeSantis, DeSantis, Andy Jassy Mike Blake, AWS's, Prasad Kalyanaraman, Kalyanaraman, Amazon's, Bard, Adam Selipsky, Adam Selipsky Noah Berger, Selipsky, Andy Jassy, Jeff Bezos, Jassy, Geekwire Organizations: Amazon Web, AWS, Business, Amazon, SMB, Enterprise, Reuters, Microsoft, Google, BI Locations: Las Vegas, AMZN's, billings
Amazon is offering a steep increase in pay for some of its frontline workers who choose to put in additional hours during the upcoming holiday shopping season. Amazon has long offered a host of incentives to attract more workers during the all-important holiday shopping period. But Avalanche stands out for its lofty premium of $10 per hour, which is nearly 50% higher than the $20.50 average hourly pay Amazon's frontline workers receive. That was a major bump from last year when Amazon said it would hire 150,000 additional frontline workers during the crucial holiday shopping period. It is simply "one of many programs" that Amazon offers its frontline workers during the holidays, and it's only available at select facilities, Stephenson added.
Persons: Amazon, Sam Stephenson, Stephenson Organizations: Amazon, Business, Avalanche, Amazon's
"I am very proud of what this organization has already delivered for Alexa and AGI," Prasad added. Amazon's AGI team wasn't launched in response to this drama. The change also follows last week's job cuts within the AGI team, as BI previously reported . The cuts were part of a broader layoff that primarily affected Amazon's Alexa team. These are the six new teams formed within the AGI unit, as per the internal email:• AGI Product: defines AGI services and engages with internal customer teams to ensure end-to-end success.
Persons: Amazon's, Rohit Prasad, Prasad, Sam Altman, that's, Altman wasn't, didn't, wasn't, Andy Jassy, AGI, It's, Organizations: Alexa, Devices, Business, Microsoft, Google, AGI, Amazon, TV
Amazon's Alexa business is laying off "several hundred" employees, including those on its recently launched artificial general intelligence team, Business Insider has learned. Rohit Prasad, SVP of the Artificial General Intelligence team, followed up with a separate email, saying his team, which launched in July, would be impacted as well. "While this was a hard decision to make, we remain very optimistic about the future of Alexa," an Amazon spokesperson told BI. The move continues to impact Amazon's Alexa unit, which has suffered from slow growth and low morale in recent years. The move continues to impact Amazon's Alexa unit, which has suffered from slow growth and low morale in recent years.
Persons: Amazon's, Daniel Rausch, it's, Rausch, Rohit Prasad, Prasad, Geekwire, Dave Limp, Alexa, Panos Paney, OpenAI's ChatGPT, Andy Jassy, Eugene Kim Organizations: Alexa, Business, Fire, BI, Artificial General Intelligence, Amazon, Microsoft
An Amazon cloud VP sent a motivational email to his team last week after GitHub, the developer code-sharing site owned by Microsoft, held an artificial intelligence event and released a bunch of new products. In it, he noted the products announced at the GitHub Universe developer conference were similar to what his team is currently working on. One of the big products announced at GitHub Universe was the general availability of its Copilot Chat, a chatbot that helps answer developer questions and identify bugs. AWS, meanwhile, has announced products like Bedrock, a service that makes foundation models more easily accessible, and CodeWhisperer, a coding assistant app. The new chatbot for AWS developers is one example of that strategy, as it's intended to guide developers towards more AWS services when they are building AI products, the person familiar with the project told BI.
Persons: GitHub, Deepak Singh, Singh, They've, Google's Bard, it's Organizations: Microsoft, Business, Amazon, Services, GitHub, BI, AWS
Amazon told its managers last month that employees slated for promotions must comply with the company's return-to-office policy, which requires them to be in the office at least three times a week. Last month, Amazon told managers that they now have discretion to fire employees who refuse to comply with the return-to-office policy, as Insider previously reported . Amazon employees have been unsuccessfully protesting the RTO mandate since February, when it was first announced . And then, Amazon told managers they were allowed to fire employees who didn't comply. They are:An employee's role must have the capacity to be performed at the next level.
Persons: Slack, Jeff Organizations: Amazon, Business
Other companies's product pages are cluttered with a mix of ads and product recommendations from competitors or sometimes irrelevant brands. The latest Apple product pages on Amazon have none of this extra marketing. In contrast, Amazon search results for other brands, such as Samsung and Sony, show at least two or three sponsored ads from rivals. At the time, Apple also asked Amazon to make its product pages clean, without any non-Apple product recommendations. By providing "accurate, relevant and qualitative content on Apple Product pages," Apple has been able to address much of the counterfeit issues on Amazon, the iPhone maker said.
Persons: Jeff Bezos, Apple, Jeff Wilke, Kaziukenas, Amazon's, Wilke, Bose, it's, I'm, , Bezos, Amazon Organizations: Amazon, Federal Trade Commission, Samsung Galaxy, Microsoft, Samsung, Apple, Sony, House, Committee, LG, Galaxy, FTC, Adidas
Amazon rolled out two new ad products within this year's Thursday Night Football broadcast — and internal projections estimate they will lead to almost $100 million in additional revenue, Insider has learned. Additionally, Amazon expects another $15 million in revenue from a second but similar type of ad unit. "In traditional media, everybody sees the same ad creative in an ad slot, hence reduces the ROl of the ad," the document said, referring to return on investment. "With audience targeting, advertisers can split the ad slot to display relevant targeted ads for different audience segments. Advertisers will get more returns on their ads and thus increase average CPM per ad slot and increase revenue per game."
Persons: Amazon's, John Ghiorso, Ghiorso Organizations: Amazon, Google, Football, Orca
Nvidia is doubling down on its effort to help those affected by the Israel-Hamas war. In an internal email on Monday, obtained by Insider, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the company will add a bonus in the upcoming paycheck for its Israel-based employees "to help in a small way." "The devastating war has caused unimaginable suffering and turned the lives of our families in Israel upside down," Huang wrote in the email. Nvidia is one of the US tech companies more directly affected by the war in Israel. Nearly 400 of those Nvidia employees have returned to military duty, Huang said in a separate email, viewed by Insider.
Persons: Jensen Huang, Huang, Nvidia's, Mellanox's, Eyal Waldman Organizations: Nvidia, Hamas, CNBC Locations: Israel, Gaza, Tel Aviv, Palestinian
Amazon is now giving managers leeway to effectively fire employees who fail to meet the company's three-times-a-week, return-to-office mandate. That's according to updated global manager guidance on Amazon's return-to-office policy obtained by Insider. The guidelines tell managers to first hold a private conversation with employees who don't comply with the three-times-a-week requirement. Giving managers the ability to fire employees for non-compliance is the strongest measure Amazon has taken over its return-to-office policy. In February, Amazon said that corporate employees would have to come into the office at least three times a week starting in May.
Persons: Amazon's, Amazon, Andy Jassy, Rob Munoz, Munoz, We'll Organizations: Amazon, Amazon's
Dash Cart users are required to sign in to the cart using an Amazon or Whole Foods account. At the time, Amazon made the Dash Cart available at select Whole Foods stores, in addition to many of its Fresh grocery stores. Once personalized ads are rolled out, Dash Cart users would get ads based on things like the area of the store they are in. Dash Cart users are able to automatically check-out products placed in the cart without having to go through a cashier. But its physical stores revenue, mostly coming from Whole Foods and its Fresh grocery stores, grew just 6% year-over-year last quarter to $5 billion.
Persons: Dash, it's, Jefferies Organizations: Amazon, Foods, Investment
Amazon's executive in charge of its private-label business has found a new role on the supply chain side, following the company's decision to axe dozens of house brands, Insider has learned. Matt Taddy, formerly Amazon's VP of private brands, is now VP of supply chain optimization technology, also known as SCOT, according to an internal email reviewed by Insider. Amazon's private label business launched dozens of in-house brands in recent years across a number of categories, including clothing, furniture, and electronics. The Federal Trade Commission said in a lawsuit against Amazon last month that the company "degrades its search quality by stacking the deck against third-party competitors of Amazon's private label products." In response, Amazon started significantly scaling back its private label business, and decided to cut many of these brands, according to the Wall Street Journal .
Persons: Matt Taddy, Taddy, Deepack Bhatia, John Felton, Felton, Matt, didn't Organizations: Worldwide Operations, Federal Trade Commission, Amazon, Wall Street, University of Chicago, Microsoft
Amazon accidentally published a job posting for a director of security engineering for something called "Project Panda" with a strange description indicating the listing would be used to find "opportunistic candidates." "This posting was listed in error and we're working to remove it," Brad Glasser, an Amazon spokesperson said. "Pooling requisition for security," the now-deleted job posting repeatedly stated. The job posting, and the description in particular, fueled speculation among insiders over if Amazon is advertising positions the company doesn't intend to fill, one told us. Amazon laid off 27,000 employees over the past year, and has put a hiring freeze in many teams across the company.
Persons: Brad Glasser, that's, Eugene Kim Organizations: Amazon, LinkedIn, AWS Locations: Detroit
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told employees that an employee in Israel had been kidnapped by Hamas. Huang told affected employees to "delegate critical work to our colleagues all around the world." download the app Email address Sign up By clicking “Sign Up”, you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . AdvertisementAdvertisementAn Nvidia employee in Israel was kidnapped by Hamas over the weekend during the attacks by Hamas on Israel. In his email on Sunday, Huang told employees to "stay home" and "prioritize your family."
Persons: Jensen Huang, Huang, Organizations: Nvidia, Service Locations: Israel, Silicon Valley, Gaza, Tel Aviv
Amazon Prime members in the US will soon be able to get free grocery delivery orders from Amazon Fresh when they spend over $100 on the site, Insider has learned. In an email to Insider, Claire Peters, Amazon's worldwide VP of Amazon Fresh, said the change will go into effect Thursday afternoon. Amazon offers grocery delivery to Prime members in more than 3,500 cities and towns across the U.S. Non-Prime members in a dozen metro areas, including Austin, Boston, and San Diego, can also receive grocery deliveries. Amazon is considering a separate, standalone grocery subscription service for Prime members, as Insider previously reported . The internal document about the new Fresh fee structure reflects Amazon's willingness to keep investing in the Fresh grocery business.
Persons: Claire Peters, Peters, Amazon's, it's, Amazon, It's, Brian Olsavsky, Eugene Kim Organizations: Amazon, Foods, U.S . Locations: Austin, Boston, San Diego
Amazon is working on a secret new initiative, called Project Nile, that overhauls its search engine to add AI chatbot technology. One potential outcome from the upgraded search experience is more sales from mobile users, according to a transcript of an internal presentation earlier this year by Joseph Sirosh, VP of Amazon Search and Alexa Shopping. Sirosh said it will be "mobile first" because that's where the new features may have the biggest impact on sales. "If we can increase the conversion on mobile, because we provide great experiences, great expert answers, then that could be a potentially significant lift to Amazon," Sirosh added. During the presentation, Sirosh said the new AI conversation layer will be added to the currently existing Amazon search bar.
Persons: Joseph Sirosh, Sirosh Organizations: Amazon Search, Alexa, Google
Insider Today: Amazon's secret search plan
  + stars: | 2023-10-03 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com   time to read: +7 min
AdvertisementAdvertisementThe retail giant is overhauling its search bar with ChatGPT-like features that'll act as a sort of concierge for customers, offering expert answers and product suggestions. Dubbed Project Nile, Amazon's top leaders, including CEO Andy Jassy, view the new search bar as a top priority. AdvertisementAdvertisementHowever, Amazon's overhauled search bar will arguably be the most impactful implementation of generative AI from Big Tech for US consumers thus far. insider intelligenceIn reading Eugene's piece, three follow-up questions immediately came to mind:How will Amazon sellers try and game the new search bar? However, Joseph Sirosh serves as VP of Amazon Search and Alexa Shopping, suggesting Alexa could get a much-needed boost from the new search bar.
Persons: , Mike Blake, Alyssa Powell, Amazon's, Andy Jassy, Eugene Kim, Joseph Sirosh, Alexa, TikTok, Ben Sun, Anu Duggal, Susan Lyne, Josh Wolfe, Matt Harris, Jillian Williams, Melissa Kwan, Sergey Brin, Brin, Hugo Herrera, Sam Bankman, Fried, Dan DeFrancesco, Naga Siu, Hallam Bullock, Lisa Ryan Organizations: Service, Reuters, Nile, Microsoft, Big Tech, Alexa, Amazon Search, Getty, Wall Street, BBG Ventures, Lux Capital, Apple, Bain Capital Ventures, Cowboy Ventures, Prosecutors, BET, MLB, American League and National League, Houston Astros Locations: Atlanta, Sonoma , California, New York City, San Diego, London, New York
"Project Nile is a confidential initiative wherein we're building a conversational shopping agent for Retail customers," one internal document explained. Wearing that "I love AI" t-shirt, Sirosh, VP of Amazon Search and Alexa Shopping, introduced Project Nile as a "super confidential" project. Project Nile isn't the only move Amazon has made in the popular generative AI space. For Amazon's retail side, Project Nile is one of the most important projects. Sirosh has told his team he's "staffing up very rapidly" as Project Nile is the "absolute top priority."
Persons: Joseph Sirosh, Sirosh, Stephen Lam, It's, they're, Andy Jassy, Doug Herrington, Jassy, Rohit Prasad, ChatGPT, Microsoft's Bing, Google's Bard Organizations: Amazon, Microsoft, Retail, Amazon Search, Alexa, Nile, ChatGPT, Google Locations: Anthropic, OpenAI
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