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Sorry, but the team that produced Alexa (& Echo) were completely separate from the team that produced the Fire Phone. There were distinct product teams, design
by sib 2y ago
Sorry, but the team that produced Alexa (& Echo) were completely separate from the team that produced the Fire Phone. There were distinct product teams, design teams, software engineering teams, hardware teams, and GM-equivalents (Amazon didn't really call people GM so much in those days.)
(Unless you're talking about the entirety of Dave Limp's organization, which produced a lot of things...)
- bmitc 2y agoI think that's actually worse. It's several disparate teams failing in similar ways. It makes Amazon looknfoolosh with their hiring process and "principles".
- rnewme 2y agoIt's hard to do products, even if you have Amazon funding.
- simfree 2y agoEspecially when you exit talent on constant hamster wheel that they run. It really is a great way to light money on fire though!
- TylerE 2y agoIt’s pretty clearly not a localized issue. Look at the whole gaming division/Lumberyard.
- simfree 2y agoAmazon can never keep people long enough to actually ship a video game. No one involved trusts Amazon to actually employ them 2 years from now, thus Amazonians have an extremely short-term mindset. It's not like they can't look across the lake to Bellevue and see Nintendo, Microsoft, Valve and others delivering consistently. The Amazon culture is just too toxic to allow this to actually grow into a popular product.
- hughesjj 2y agoIDK, the pirate software guy said Amazon was worlds better than blizzard, and the gaming industry isn't known for job stability. Lots of fire after game is shipped and rehire under another contract.
- philwelch 2y agoAlso, IIRC, the Fire Phone was heavily influenced by the personal involvement of Jeff Bezos himself.
- simfree 2y agoShipping a 1366 by potato screen phone with an outdated version of Android, and an app store that was missing most apps. AT&T could only push that pile of crap so far, they really did have their sales teams push it hard though. Very hard to convince a customer to get a Fire phone rather than a Galaxy S4, or even an S3.
- toast0 2y agoThey did court apps with AWS credits and things (at least they did for the one I was working on). I think they didn't realize (or plan for) the part where apps had dependencies on other Googley stuff. Can't just push the apk to Amazon too, if Amazon doesn't have a workalike maps api, etc. When the Fire phone was on Fire sale, it was a pretty good value for users though. The launcher was weird, but you could smuggle Google Play store on it, and it had a good processor.
- RyJones 2y agoProject B veteran reporting! Everyone I worked with on Fire Phone knew it was doomed.
- zaptrem 2y agoWhy did they give it such mediocre hardware and old software?
- RyJones 2y agoI can only make informed guesses. My feeling is the phone was shipped as a contractual obligation on both sides. Think the Microsoft kin phone and Verizon as an analog.
- sib 2y agoIt was delayed a looooong time and the hardware/OS was locked fairly early. If it had been released when originally planned, it would not have felt so old. I still don't think it would necessarily have rocked the world; too many other issues.