Amazon's quest to become a startup again; Driverless cars, 6 years later
GeekWire
GeekWire
4.8 • 127 Ratings
🗓️ 21 September 2024
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Amazon's decision to bring its employees back to the office five days a week is a window into the challenges facing the e-commerce and technology giant, and CEO Andy Jassy's larger plan to get the company to operate like "the world's largest startup" again.
Plus, GeekWire's John Cook gets into the back seat of a driverless car for the first time since 2018, and has a very different experience.
Coverage of Amazon's announcement:
- Amazon ‘will return to being in the office the way we were’ before the pandemic, CEO tells employees
- ‘The way we were’: Amazon tries to rekindle its future by rediscovering a spark from the past
- Thoughts on Amazon’s full return to the office from a CEO who knows the value — and the trade-offs
- A ‘home run’ or a ‘cowardly’ decision? Amazon’s new in-person work policy elicits cheers and jeers
- Amazon’s new back-to-office mandate fuels debate over remote work and productivity
Waymo links and related stories:
- NPR: Armed with traffic cones, protesters are immobilizing driverless cars
- GeekWire in 2018: We rode in Uber’s self-driving car, and now we’re less confident in the future of autonomous vehicles
- Video of John's Waymo ride this week.
- The Verge: Waymo and Uber expand their robotaxi partnership to Austin and Atlanta
With John Cook and Todd Bishop; Edited by Curt Milton.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This GeekWire Podcast is brought to you by BECU. |
| 0:04.0 | Stay tuned to the break as Brian Westbrook interviews BECU's Stacey Black |
| 0:09.0 | for today's Money Hack about talking with the children and young adults in your life about money. |
| 0:14.0 | For more money hacks, check out GeekWire.com slash beecu. |
| 0:19.0 | There's another apparent subculture of people that are getting into these vehicles |
| 0:24.8 | that have sex. Oh yes yes. |
| 0:27.1 | Geez. Didn't need to know that. When I heard this I was like, oh my God I cannot wait |
| 0:31.7 | for this to come to Seattle because these are |
| 0:33.7 | great stories I was like these are fantastic where are you going with that I was |
| 0:38.5 | wondering where are you going to be on top of covering those stories as long as you're on top of the story yes on top of covering those stories. As long as you're on top of the stories. |
| 0:44.0 | Yes, on top of the stories. |
| 0:46.0 | That's what I want to be on top of. |
| 0:47.0 | Hi and welcome to GeekWire. I'm GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop and I'm GeekWire |
| 0:57.3 | co-founder John Cook. We are coming to you from Seattle where we get to report each |
| 1:01.4 | day on what's happening around us in |
| 1:03.2 | business technology and innovation. What happens here matters everywhere and |
| 1:07.0 | every week on this show we talk about some of the most interesting and important |
| 1:11.4 | trends in the news coming up up later on, it is my AI, except it is John's |
| 1:17.0 | AI. He's going to be talking with us about his experience with a Waymo driverless car. But first, I fibbed a little bit. I'm not in |
| 1:25.4 | Seattle. I'm working remotely today which... Kise into our discussion, yeah perfect. |
| 1:30.7 | Big news from Amazon this week, holy cow, and just to set the stage here, how many months ago |
| 1:37.2 | was it that we heard a rumor that Amazon was going to be going from three to five days a week in the office. |
... |
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