What do these divisions do?
The devices division is the one that popularized the speakers with which consumers interact by voice.
The retailer set out to make Alexa – its device-powering voice assistant – ubiquitous and used to place any purchase order, though it was unclear to what extent users have embraced it for tasks more complex than checking the news or the weather.
Some media, including Reuters, reported on Monday that the cuts would amount to 3% of the company’s roughly 300,000 employees, without affecting warehouse and transportation employees.
Some people who work at Alexa reported on LinkedIn Tuesday that they had lost their jobs. The unit in charge of the virtual assistant, a project inspired by a talking computer from the science fiction series Star Trek, reached 10,000 workers in 2019.
At the time, Amazon touted the sale of more than 100 million Alexa devices, a figure it hasn’t publicly updated since. Its founder, Jeff Bezos, later said that the company often sold Alexa devices at a discount and sometimes below cost.
