Amazon Voice Assistant – Inside Amazon

Matt Turner is the editor in chief for business at Insider. Insider Weekly, welcome back. I hope everyone had a wonderful and relaxing Thanksgiving. Let’s jump right into our top picks this week.

Today’s agenda:

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Alexa is currently on life support 

Amazon’s voice-assistant Alexa was once hailed as the “computer of the future” and “the future of every home” — but nearly 10 years later, Alexa is being gutted.

Low employee morale, failed monetization attempts, and a lack of engagement across users and developers has led to Alexa — and the devices team at Amazon — being the prime target of the biggest layoffs in Amazon history.

Over a dozen current and former employees told Insider’s Eugene Kim that the division is in crisis — and the mounting losses and massive cuts underscore the swift downfall of Alexa.

Go inside Amazon’s Alexa unit. 

Bob Iger’s return from Disney

Walt Disney stunned Hollywood by re-instating Bob Iger as its chief operating officer. Company insiders said that his return to the throne was a matter days. 

The board received months of complaints about Bob Chapek who was appointed Disney’s CEO in February 2020. Even though staff applaud Iger’s return, they remain anxious about how he will manage in an uncertain economy and potentially layoffs. 

Wall Street observers have begun to speculate as to who will take the reins. 

Here are some of the comments made by Disney employees.

Email leaked to reveal new processes for Twitter employees

Twitter’s remaining employees should now keep Elon Musk informed about everything they do each week.

In a Monday evening email, all employees coding or doing technical work were told they need to submit a weekly summary of what they worked on, what they hoped to complete, and specific lines of code they wrote — “in order to innovate rapidly.”

Musk responded to a tweet that cited Kali Hays, a correspondent on the email leakage, and said the decision was not unreasonable.

You can read the entire email here.

Plus, check out:

Lawyers for Swiftie are mobilizing

The week of November 14, 2022, will go down in history — and not just Taylor Swift history. Swift’s fans are now determined to challenge corporate monopolies as well as change the laws that govern them forever after the Ticketmaster scandal.

Swift fans were left with many questions and concerns after the chaos of Swift’s Eras Tour presales. They gathered together on social media to vent their frustrations and take action. Many of these fans are lawyers and are looking to represent those who have had troubling Ticketmaster experiences.

Swifties take on Ticketmaster.

Also see:

This week’s quote

“I had an epiphany towards the end 2019 Each year we were notified how many nights we stayed at hotels and how many flights each of us took. I was able to take 99 flights and stay in hotels for more than 130 nights that year.

Here are more of the week’s top picks

Matt Turner is the curator. Edited and edited by Hallam, Phil Rosen, Lisa Ryan. Register for the Insider newsletter here.