JCM9

11 ms·

61.
by JCM9 1y ago
The original shareholder letter said the company wouldn’t pander to Wall Street or focus on short term improvements. It’s now slashing jobs a few days before earnings to try and placate Wall Street since it can’t grow via innovation. That’s
62.
by JCM9 1y ago
AWS is probably in last place among computing clouds on AI and the AI managed services from AWS are pretty second-rate. Amazon had Alexa (Echos) everywhere and that was teed up to knock it out of the park putting a real AI assistant in ever
63.
by JCM9 1y ago
To be clear, it’s worse. Read the press release carefully: 1. 14k was the net change in “corporate headcount” which is PR puffery speak saying they’re firing a lot more but when you net out folks let go slotting into open roles elsewhere th
64.
by JCM9 1y ago
The layoffs have nothing to do with AI. It’s sorting out org bloat, span of control issues, and teams without a clear ROI. Normal “leadership mismanaged the company and now there’s a mess to cleanup” stuff.
65.
by JCM9 1y ago
Great channel, and yes the ineffectiveness of nearly all commercially available locks is depressing. At best it would briefly slow down a skilled picker.
66.
by JCM9 1y ago
Like a lot of big tech companies Amazon is a small number of teams with profitable products and a whole bunch of other things that don’t make money. Events like this are when the teams not contributing to the bottom line are cleaned up.
67.
by JCM9 1y ago
By your definition then every little part of “Amazon” is technically a separate “company” including every geo. For the purposes of the discussion at hand they’re all the same. Amazon PXT and finance is the same team as AWS PXT and finance.
68.
by JCM9 1y ago
Remember these things tend to be lumpy. While that’s a bit over 10% of corporate employees depending on how you count some teams won’t get touched and thus other areas will either get blown up entirely or have layoff rates of much higher th
69.
by JCM9 1y ago
Amazon includes AWS. They’re not “separate companies.”
70.
by JCM9 1y ago
That’s PR speak for “our leadership has messed up big time and this was the most convenient excuse we could come up with that doesn’t just throw our C-suite in front of the bus.” Earnings call is this week. Expect some good tap dancing.
71.
by JCM9 1y ago
Not surprising given folks have been saying Amazon/AWS has been a bloated mess for a while now. After periods of strong growth it’s not unusual for things to need a good cleanup. Unfortunately good folks find themselves on the wrong te
72.
by JCM9 1y ago
Yes. You don’t need to be moving $ to have a profit or loss. You could take your salary in sacks of potatoes. You still owe the government taxes on the fair market value of your pile of potatoes. A while back there was a big fuss because ex
73.
by JCM9 1y ago
“Irrational exuberance.” There are parallels here of folks getting so caught up in the hype that they forgot business fundamentals. Everytime folks say “but this is different” and every time it’s not.
74.
by JCM9 1y ago
Correct. It wasn’t a secret that AWS was profitable. Revealing those numbers put a lot more pressure on Amazon to get other business lines in better shape financially. Something Amazon was keen to avoid for as long as it could.
75.
by JCM9 1y ago
Fair. There are counter examples, although those are pretty rare. Usually publicly traded companies don’t hide when they’re doing really well. The inverse true now with AWS. Lots of press about analysis on how AWS is in “last place” on AI a
76.
by JCM9 1y ago
Yes. The point of the article though is that the list of usual excuses is becoming hard to justify here.
77.
by JCM9 1y ago
Agree on the long term concept, but there’s little comparison between Amazon’s early years and now. Amazon spent money on tangible capital infrastructure that was highly differentiated and long lasting (fulfillment centers, logistics networ
78.
by JCM9 1y ago
Accounting mostly focuses on the value of things, not “liquid money.”
79.
by JCM9 1y ago
You’re not wrong, but the point of the article is that for a publicly traded company there’s an expectation of more transparency. The size of the losses is getting to a point where it can’t just be kept hidden inside a handwavy “other” line
80.
by JCM9 1y ago
Companies have a lot of tools at their disposal to hide things on their balance sheet for a while. However when that happens it typically means the numbers are bad. Really bad. If they weren’t, they’d do everything they can to highlight how
81.
by JCM9 1y ago
Fair point that there’s less direct retail investor exposure than there was with the dot-com implosion, but I don’t think many folks believe this bubble is non-poppable. Even megacorps can’t just keep inflating it forever if no viable busin
82.
by JCM9 1y ago
Yes… a lot of this is pretty hidden on the balance sheets but eventually GAAP catches up one way or another.
83.
by JCM9 1y ago
OpenAI is a textbook example of having fun by burning cash. Nobody doubts it’s “cool.” Lots of people questioning if there’s an actual business there.
84.
by JCM9 1y ago
The real story will be when companies report valuation losses from their investments in AI companies after the bubble bursts, or even deflates a bit. Expect lots of hand wavy “non-GAAP” numbers pushed by leadership trying to gloss over thei
85.
by JCM9 1y ago
The article strikes me as a self congratulatory solution to solving a problem that they could just have avoided entirely by instead selling hardware with local video storage. Lots of options for doing that efficiently and inexpensively in 2
86.
by JCM9 1y ago
It’s an over engineered solution to a, relatively, simple problem of access long the device on the local network. This used to be a hard problem to solve but in 2025 I’d question why they’re going through the headache of all this cloud stuf
87.
by JCM9 1y ago
+1 for Unifi. They’ve added “baby crying” to the audio monitoring for triggering alerts. Everything is kept local on your LAN. Can access remotely via an app if you wish, but that’s simply accessing the device on your LAN so no dumping all
88.
by JCM9 1y ago
Well “there was a time” when it was more true. Now so not really. With the exodus the bar at Amazon/AWS for taken has fallen quite a bit and in many areas a leading L7+ at Amazon is maybe a B-lister at best elsewhere. Especially in com
89.
by JCM9 1y ago
There was a time when the L7+ principal IC at Amazon/AWS were rockstars in our industry that represented the pinnacle of one’s career. It’s been sad to watch the talent exodus there on my LinkedIn these last 12+ months as these folks f
90.
by JCM9 1y ago
Amazon now does this with badge swipe data, and because you must badge in and out of Amazon offices they also track and report on how many hours you’re in the office.

More ›