One thing which is sorely missed in such discussions is the employee efforts. Out of all the companies, Amazon's hours seems to be the worse of the lot.
That said, I really like Bezos (or Amazon) that they took risks on thing like AI, AWS etc. I find that lot of companies lack that insight. Even when they are not doing great, I routinely find executives hem and haw about their "core business". Most of these companies end up scraping the bottom of the barrel for profitability and keeping the company afloat for couple of years more.
An insightful comment that had to be made - I wonder why people downvoted it.
Indeed, Amazon is probably the best and the worst about the modern tech: an ambitious leader, who manages to create paradigm shifts in areas where he is not a subject matter expert; and a sweatshop-like environment where the low ranking employees are treated like oompah loompahs.
As an Amazon employee, I tend to think Amazon's reputation is overstated. Some teams definitely have very high operational loads, but in general my hours have been comparable to friends in similar tech companies and certainly less than friends in industries like medicine, management consulting, etc.
It's very strange to describe Amazon (at least engineering roles) as a sweatshop considering how well compensated employees are.
I've heard there are signs in the elevators imploring employees to stay past 4 o'clock and enjoy the downtown amenities because everyone leaves at 4 and the downtown congestion gets pretty bad.
I know engineers at Amazon, many of them work very comfortable hours.
"Amazon's hours" - I think this notion is misguided.
Just like every tech company; if you have good working habits, and can push back when given too much work (having a good manager helps), you can have a great career at Amazon. I work at Amazon and the best employees, the ones who get promotions and deliver great work typically work 9-5 hours.
I'm sure it varies between teams but I'm in year three of being a SDE and I would recommend Amazon highly.
I have to say I'm disappointed by the mild boosterism that runs through Steven Levy's coverage of large corporations. For example:
> Amazon’s product recommendations had been infused with AI since the company’s very early days,
Really? Is it the kind of AI that impresses people today? Or was it just collaborative filtering. This narrative that "things were good and now they're getting better" is common in corporate communications, but shouldn't be part of neutral coverage.
Or this:
> “But they have really come on aggressively. Now they are becoming a force.”
> Maybe the force.
That's absurd. When you look at where Google has taken TensorFlow, AlphaGo and Waymo, and compare it with really any other company in the world, it would be hard to anticipate that Amazon would become the force.
Amazon was forced to adopt an outside machine-learning framework, MxNet, as its own when its in-house toolkit didn't get traction. That's in stark contrast to Google, again.
I'd say Amazon's main advantage is in its ability to sell infrastructure and platforms that enable developers to build apps -- which in this case will help productize ML in various ways. But I would not call it the force in AI.
This reads like a Siri article from 6 years ago. "All that data from people using it means it will only get better and better, and as it gets better no one will need to use their smartphone or search the web anymore." Right...
Readit News
That said, I really like Bezos (or Amazon) that they took risks on thing like AI, AWS etc. I find that lot of companies lack that insight. Even when they are not doing great, I routinely find executives hem and haw about their "core business". Most of these companies end up scraping the bottom of the barrel for profitability and keeping the company afloat for couple of years more.
Indeed, Amazon is probably the best and the worst about the modern tech: an ambitious leader, who manages to create paradigm shifts in areas where he is not a subject matter expert; and a sweatshop-like environment where the low ranking employees are treated like oompah loompahs.
It's very strange to describe Amazon (at least engineering roles) as a sweatshop considering how well compensated employees are.
I know engineers at Amazon, many of them work very comfortable hours.
Just like every tech company; if you have good working habits, and can push back when given too much work (having a good manager helps), you can have a great career at Amazon. I work at Amazon and the best employees, the ones who get promotions and deliver great work typically work 9-5 hours.
I'm sure it varies between teams but I'm in year three of being a SDE and I would recommend Amazon highly.
Dead Comment
> Amazon’s product recommendations had been infused with AI since the company’s very early days,
Really? Is it the kind of AI that impresses people today? Or was it just collaborative filtering. This narrative that "things were good and now they're getting better" is common in corporate communications, but shouldn't be part of neutral coverage.
Or this:
> “But they have really come on aggressively. Now they are becoming a force.”
> Maybe the force.
That's absurd. When you look at where Google has taken TensorFlow, AlphaGo and Waymo, and compare it with really any other company in the world, it would be hard to anticipate that Amazon would become the force.
Amazon was forced to adopt an outside machine-learning framework, MxNet, as its own when its in-house toolkit didn't get traction. That's in stark contrast to Google, again.
I'd say Amazon's main advantage is in its ability to sell infrastructure and platforms that enable developers to build apps -- which in this case will help productize ML in various ways. But I would not call it the force in AI.
It might soon be the most popular, and perhaps best, consumer voice assistant:
http://h4labs.org/amazons-alexa-blindsided-apple-and-google/
Is there any evidence to this speculation?
Linked article has a link that just points to the sales of the device itself as proof.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2018/01/09/adobe-e...
Amazon is definitely working on improving this.
“Alexa, what are my deals?”
https://www.amazon.com/b?node=16924225011
Sounds like they will be investing significantly more into Alexa:
http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-says-al...