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posted by cmn32480 on Friday August 28 2015, @05:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the what-happened-to-just-selling-books-online dept.

Amazon is laying off "dozens" of employees at Lab126, the hardware-development center in Silicon Valley responsible for products like the Fire Phone, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. Sources at Amazon "familiar with the matter" told the WSJ that the company has scaled back or halted numerous development projects, including a large-screen tablet and a smart stylus.

The WSJ's sources claim that the layoffs form part of a broad reorganisation at Lab126, which began last year after disappointing sales of the Fire Phone. This resulted in Lab126 combining its tablet, e-reader, and phone projects. In October 2014, it emerged that Amazon was sitting on over $83 million (~£54 million) of unsold Fire phones, which the company swiftly tried to shift by offering a substantial price drop.

It's not yet clear whether Amazon will continue its in-house smartphone development. Some engineers at Lab126 told the WSJ that development would be shelved, while another claimed it had been shifted to Seattle under Steve Kessel, an executive who helped spearhead the company's hardware unit and oversaw digital media like e-books and music.

Has Amazon bitten off more than it can chew with mobile devices?


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Friday August 28 2015, @06:02PM

    by PizzaRollPlinkett (4512) on Friday August 28 2015, @06:02PM (#229096)

    Amazon has trolled me for years (mostly via LinkedIn), wanting me to come to hiring fairs in random cities at my own expense and beg their outsourced recruiting drones to let me have a chance to beg them for a job. They seem desperate to find people, trawling all over the USA. So now they're purging people who were working on their mobile devices? These people couldn't work on anything else? I'm glad I didn't take a job there (I wouldn't work there if they paid me ...wait... that didn't come out right) and this is going to be a black eye in their trolling/recruiting efforts. Well, the NYT article about how awful a place it is to work will give them a black eye, but this can't help, either. Amazon can burn in a fire for all I care. Wait, they are already burning in the Fire they lit for themselves.

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    (E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by bob_super on Friday August 28 2015, @06:31PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Friday August 28 2015, @06:31PM (#229108)

    For every engineer they lay off, the CIS should cancel one H1B application.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @06:37PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @06:37PM (#229112)

    Amazon has trolled me for years (mostly via LinkedIn), wanting me to come to hiring fairs in random cities at my own expense and beg their outsourced recruiting drones to let me have a chance to beg them for a job.

    Same here. I couldn't believe anyone would have the brass to ask prospective employees to do that. Even Google will do a phone screen or three before flying you out (at their expense) for an onsite.

    In light of all the recent revelations about that company, though, it probably fits in well with Amazon's unique sociopathic vibe.

  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday August 28 2015, @07:04PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday August 28 2015, @07:04PM (#229120) Journal

    That occurred to me as well. What work environment do techs love to work in more than anything else? A penal colony like Amazon, to be sure.

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    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday August 29 2015, @12:42AM

      by Francis (5544) on Saturday August 29 2015, @12:42AM (#229264)

      Penal colony? Aren't they trying to employ some women?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @01:39AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @01:39AM (#229287)

        You are thinking of a penile colony.

  • (Score: 1) by MillionthMonkey on Sunday August 30 2015, @07:10AM

    by MillionthMonkey (2861) on Sunday August 30 2015, @07:10AM (#229727)

    A friend of mine is a hiring manager at Amazon... He told me that they'd relocate me there. I told him to give me a call once they're hiring drone pilots.