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Amazon

Amazon plans to trim employee stock awards amid tough economy

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As the world’s largest online retailer experiences an unstable economic climate, Amazon.com Inc said it will limit employee stock grants, a component of its compensation scheme.

Employees of Amazon are given shares of Amazon stock as just a component of their complete compensation scheme. These stocks are known as Restricted Stock Units (RSUs). These stocks vest throughout time as opposed to being granted at one time.

Amazon
Image Source: investing.com

The tech behemoth stated in March that it intended to eliminate 9,000 employees, making it the most recent business in that sector to do so in the context of a potential downturn.

Also Read: Meta releases AI model that can identify items within images

Adding to a surge of job losses that have rocked the tech industry as a challenging economy compels corporations to get smaller, this announcement comes weeks since Amazon declared a new round of major layoffs.

“We made the decision to reduce RSU (restricted stock units) awards in the final outlook year by a small amount (other years are not impacted),” an Amazon spokesperson said in an emailed statement, without specifying the period of the final outlook year.

Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com

The announcement comes with Amazon’s announcement of a 2nd round of huge job cuts a few weeks earlier, adding to a surge of job losses that have rocked the technology industry since tough economic times compel firms and various businesses to become smaller.

The proposed adjustment to the firm’s pay scale was initially reported by Business Insider, which also stated that Amazon would re-evaluate 2025 salary during the initial quarter of 2019 to prepare for stock variation

“The company was weighing the possibility of adjusting its compensation model in the future to be more balanced between base cash compensation and equity, after looking at the combination of an uncertain economy and its compensation budget,” the spokesperson said.

Source: livemint.com

Following a nearly 50 percent share decline in 2022, Amazon’s share price has increased this year by more than 20 percent.

Also Read: Google Workers in London stage walkout over job cuts

As a part of massive layoffs, Amazon.com Inc. fired around 100 staff from its video-game businesses, Game Growth, including Prime Gaming, and the firm’s San Diego facility.

Even with its Crown channel which is an entertainment channel on the Twitch streaming video service, Amazon has had difficulty making the most of its gaming tools.

amazon

Amazon to Cut 9,000 More Jobs, Deepening Biggest Pullback Ever

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Amazon.com Inc. is going to lay off an added 9,000 workers, bringing the total number of layoffs to the firm’s all-time high.

CEO Andy Jassy declared the cutbacks privately on Monday, stating that they would take effect in the following weeks and therefore would impact Amazon Web Services, advertising, human resources, and the Twitch live broadcasting service communities.

Amazon
Image Source: news.yahoo.com

“Given the uncertain economy in which we reside, and the uncertainty that exists in the near future, we have chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount,” he said in his memo, published later to Amazon’s corporate blog.

Source: news.yahoo.com

Also Read: Twitter Cuts More Engineering, and Product Jobs to Curb Costs

Twitch’s arriving CEO stated in a personal blog article that 400 people would be laid off at the subsidiary based in San Francisco. A spokesperson for Amazon did not provide information on how the remaining layoffs would be distributed.

The e-commerce behemoth has been firing mainly corporate workers ever since a hiring binge during the global epidemic left Amazon with an overabundance of employees.

The company recently completed a round of massive layoffs summing up approximately 18,000 employees. These layoffs began in November and were concentrated primarily on Amazon’s recruitment and human resources workgroups, as well as its vast retail team as well as devices teams.

In New York, Amazon shares dropped 1.3 percent to 97.71 USD. This year, the stock has risen approximately 16 percent.

According to Jassy, the recent layoffs occurred ever since teams finished one other step of the firm’s yearly planning process. He stated that most of Amazon’s enterprises have witnessed tremendous growth in the last few years.

“The overriding tenet of our annual planning this year was to be leaner while doing so in a way that enables us to still invest robustly in the key long-term customer experiences that we believe can meaningfully improve customers’ lives and Amazon as a whole,” he said.

Source: news.yahoo.com

The layoffs arrive in the week following the announcement that Facebook acquirer Meta Platforms Corporation revealed a further 10,000 layoffs and the closure of around 5,000 extra open positions as part of its second large round of massive layoffs.

Also Read: Meta to end news access for Canadians

Throughout a latest executive discussion, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told staff that the business situation of job cuts as well as restructuring can last some more years.

Google’s parent corporation Alphabet Inc., Dell Technologies Inc., Microsoft Corp., and International Business Machines Corp. have all lowered their workforce. As per a Bloomberg survey, more than 67,000 positions had been lost in the business ever since the start of the calendar year as of early February.

AWS

Amazon Web Services pairs with Hugging Face to target AI developers

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Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon corporation’s cloud computing wing, announced on Tuesday that it is cooperating with development company Hugging Face which is a software development center, to simplify the process to carry out ai technology (AI) work in Amazon’s cloud.

Image Source: japan.zdnet.com

Whereas the latest generative AI solutions from Microsoft Corporation as well as Alphabet Corp’s Google have caught the public’s attention, technology companies including AWS are competing behind the sights to provide the services and tools that software engineers will require in order to incorporate nearly the same technology into their own goods.

Microsoft has well announced recently a multi-year collaboration with OpenAI to advance Abilities.

Google’s response to ChatGPT is an AI chatbot called Bard.

Also Read: Google Chrome rolls out long-awaited battery-saving features

At the moment, Bard has reached the final stages of testing and therefore is scheduled for release by the end of the month of February 2023.

AWS, the world’s largest cloud computing provider, already provides tools to assist programmers in developing AI-based applications, ranging from specialized computing chips for raining AI algorithms on enormous quantities of information at a cheaper price than competitors to facilities that decrease the time required to generate a chatbot or even other AI products.

AWS announced on Tuesday it was going to collaborate with Hugging Face which is a company based in New York that has grown into a central internet location for AI developers to exchange open-source code as well as models.

Hugging Face’s CEO, Clem Delangue, stated that although the agreement is not exclusive, the business is collaborating closely with AWS to make it simple for devs to take code from the site & operate it on the AWS cloud.

“For this product collaboration, we’re dedicating significant engineering resources to build our shared products,” Delangue told Reuters in an interview.

Source: dcfx.com

Clem Delangue also stated that the forthcoming generation of Bloom which is an open-source AI prototype that currently operates in terms of size as well as scope with the model used by Microsoft-powered OpenAI to develop ChatGPT will operate on Trainium, an AWS-developed specialized artificial intelligence chip.

Also Read: Meta Launches Subscription Service for Facebook and Instagram

Swami Sivasubramanian who is the AWS vice president of database, analytics, as well as machine learning, affirms Trainium could indeed assist devs to focus on saving money as AI consumes so much computing power, as well as AWS desires to make it easier for devs to embrace them.

“We want to make sure they have access to our silicon and networking innovations,” Sivasubramanian told Reuters.

Source: dcfx.com
Zappos

Amazon Subsidiary Zappos Lays Off Around 20% of Staff

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As per individuals associated with the job cuts as well as a Zappos memo obtained by The Wall Street Journal, Zappos fired more than 300 of its workers the previous month, representing approximately 20 percent of the firm’s workforce in Las Vegas.

The Zappos job cuts were part of a larger round of cutbacks at Amazon which are anticipated to impact over 18,000 staff members, according to the Wall Street Journal. Those who are also the latest in a string of shifts by Zappos’ lifelong parent corporation that, according to individuals associated with the companies, have largely crumbled Mr. Hsieh’s legacy.

Zappos
Image Source: inventiva.co.in

In the early 2000s, Mr. Hsieh led Zappos from its starting as just an online shoe business to its selling to Amazon in 2009 for 1.2 billion USD, & he remained in charge of it independently till his death at the age of 46 in November 2020. He has been well-known as a leading pioneer via his greatest book “Delivering Happiness,” in addition to being a famous and successful downtown Las Vegas developer.

Also Read: Dell to slash about 6,650 jobs in latest tech job cuts

As per individuals associated with the businesses, one of the massive modifications at Zappos is the departure of a longstanding Zappos executive and Mr. Hsieh’s right-hand man for many years Tyler Williams, who resigned from the firm during the latest round of layoffs.

In an email to employees in January, existing CEO Scott Schaefer named the layoffs “extremely difficult news,” echoing views expressed by many other tech titans following recent layoffs.

“As we enter 2023, we are still facing an uncertain economy which required us to continue to take a hard look at our business, and respond in a way that ensures we are set up for long-term success,” he wrote to employees.

Source: wsj.com

According to individuals associated with the industries, Mr. Hsieh was willing to sell the company to Amazon upon the condition that the firm will function independently, even though Amazon is much more engaged in Zappos as well as its management decisions than it was when Mr. Hsieh managed the company. Zappos is presently financially viable, even if it has yet to meet all of the growth set targets by Amazon, according to the company.

Also Read: Google has rolled out Immersive View for Maps across five cities

An Amazon spokeswoman said, “We’re proud of everything Zappos has accomplished since joining forces with Amazon in 2009, and we continue to support their ongoing commitment to delivering the best possible customer experience.”

Source: wsj.com
Ring

Amazon’s Ring finally debuts its in-car security camera

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Amazon owns the home security and smart home business Ring LLC. The Ring Car Cam is now accessible for preorder, more than two years after it was first announced. The company’s first dashboard security camera is now available for purchase at Amazon.com or Ring.com for $199.99, a $50 discount off the list price. It will start shipping to US customers on February 15.

Ring
Image Source: geekwire.com

The new Ring Car Cam, which will be available later this year, adopts a novel strategy for the company by taking its security features to the road. A set of HD cameras are housed inside the modern design that sits on the dashboard and faces both into and out of the vehicle.

The night vision-enhanced wide-angle lenses encompass the road and the interior of the vehicle to guard against both accidents and break-ins. Ring adds its customary software to the hardware to enhance the Car Cam interaction.

Real-time notifications are powered by motion alerts, and a live view function that works well with two-way chat is also included.

Not to mention that the entire setup is Alexa-compatible, so one can ask the voice assistant to automatically record film to capture anything—including anything one has just passed on the road.

While driving, video can be automatically or manually recorded. If users purchase a Ring Protect Go plan, which includes LTE connectivity and costs $6 per month or $60 per year, they can access a live feed from the camera while they’re not in the car.

Additionally, the subscription includes 180 days of cloud storage for videos as well as real-time incident alerts in the Ring app. When the camera is linked to Wi-Fi, such as when parked in the driveway or via the hotspot on the phone, it can access local storage. While driving, video can be automatically or manually recorded.

If users purchase a Ring Protect Go plan, which includes LTE connectivity and costs $6 per month or $60 per year, they can access a live feed from the camera while they’re not in the car. Additionally, the subscription includes 180 days of cloud storage for videos as well as real-time incident alerts in the Ring app.

When the camera is linked to Wi-Fi, such as when parked in the driveway or via the hotspot on your phone, it can access local storage. When using the Traffic Stop feature of the Ring Car Cam, users can instantly begin recording during a stop or after an accident, for example, by saying “Alexa, record.”

The OBD-II port on the vehicle serves as the device’s power source. The cable is neatly secured between the windscreen and the dashboard with the aid of a tool that attaches to the windscreen.

For watching both recorded and live video from its two cameras, the camera integrates with the Ring app. For two-way communication from the automobile or to get in touch with others who are in the car, one may also utilize the built-in microphone and speaker.

Amazon

Amazon plans to cut more than 18,000 jobs

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Amazon announced on Wednesday that it will eliminate more than 18,000 employees which is a larger number than the e-commerce giant initially stated last year.

Amazon
Image Source: timesnownews.com

The Wall Street Journal had previously reported on the cuts, which Amazon claimed pre-empted its scheduled announcement.

“We typically wait to communicate about these outcomes until we can speak with the people who are directly impacted,” CEO Andy Jassy wrote in a memo to employees that the company published on its blog. “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.”

Source: cnbc.com

Tech firms are picking up from where they left off a year ago in 2023, getting ready for a prolonged economic recession. Salesforce announced on Wednesday that it would decrease its headcount by 10 percent, affecting over 7,000 employees. During the Covid global epidemic, both Amazon as well as Salesforce conceded to hiring too quickly.

Amazon particularly accepted that it had placed too many warehouse staff too quickly since customers shifted to online shopping. At the finish of the third quarter, the firm employed about 1.54 million individuals.

In November, Jassy announced that Amazon would remove positions, such as those in its physical stores, devices, and books divisions. CNBC revealed at the time that tech giant Amazon was planning to lay off approximately 10,000 employees. The figure has risen.

“Amazon has weathered uncertain and difficult economies in the past, and we will continue to do so,” Jassy wrote. “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.”

Source: cnbc.com

The company intends to notify staff members who will be laid off beginning January 18, Jassy stated, mentioning that the majority of layoffs will occur in the Experience, stores, and People, and Technology (PXT) groups.

Other major tech companies, including Meta, which possesses Facebook, Instagram, as well as WhatsApp, and other businesses based on the cloud such as software firm Salesforce, have recently revealed significant layoffs.

Amazon has so far declared that it will start reducing projects such as the Echo which is better known as Alexa as well as delivery robots, that were wonderful but did not generate revenue.