Amazon's new reality: How the tech giant is adjusting to the tough economy

GeekWire

Technology, Tech News, News

4.4 • 116 Ratings

🗓️ 5 November 2022

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Amazon has grown dramatically over the past decade, surpassing 1.5 million employees and extending its reach into nearly every corner of commerce and society. But now, the turbulent economy is forcing the tech giant to make a series of difficult decisions, cutting back in many areas while making strategic bets in others.

It’s far from alone in facing these decisions. However, with its reach across e-commerce, physical retail, cloud computing, robotics, AI, transportation, logistics, and many other areas, Amazon is a microcosm of the larger economy. That makes it worth examining not just for its own future but for the broader implications.

On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we take a closer look at the forces influencing Amazon’s business, and how the company is responding.

See this GeekWire post for more information and related links.

With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	And probably the biggest sign of the new frugality at Amazon. I'm not sure what you thought about the news of them shifting from two pizza meetings to one pizza meetings.
0:12.0	I missed this. Are you kidding?
0:14.1	You know what? At this point I would believe anything clearly and I hope people take
0:19.8	that as having an open mind and not being going. Welcome to GeekWire.
0:30.0	From GeekWire.
0:31.0	From GeekWire. Come in Seattle.
0:33.0	I'm Todd Bishop.
0:34.0	And I'm John Cook.
0:35.0	This week, Amazon as a microcosm of the economy, looking at the company's recent decisions
0:41.8	and its numbers to better understand where things are headed.
0:45.1	My theory is that you can look at Amazon and learn something from almost every
0:52.4	aspect of its business and so we're going to be
0:54.8	talking about that this week. John you probably saw the news on Thursday this week that
1:00.2	Amazon is pausing its hiring in its corporate workforce for the next few months.
1:05.0	Of course it's not alone in this trend, but that seems pretty significant and in some ways
1:10.7	an escalation of cutbacks in spending that we've been seeing across the tech world.
1:16.0	Yeah, well when you look at Amazon, any pause on hiring is significant because they hired, and this was a small growth curve for them, but they hired 21,000 employees
1:27.6	during the third quarter.
1:28.7	I mean, that's a significant number of employees.
1:31.8	They've grown to 1.54 million employees. They're a massive
1:35.3	employer. So them pumping the brakes on hiring in any regard will have some impact on the economy in a lot of different regions where they operate.
1:46.7	I think Todd you've reported before that now California is I think the number one state for Amazon employees, I think followed by Texas and then Washington state and I don't know if those
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from GeekWire, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of GeekWire and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.