We kick things off with Neil’s reaction to news of Amazon looking at a major cost review that includes scaling back its devices division. The discussion then turns to Bloomberg Businessweek’s big profile on Apple Store employee unionization. We go over what the article was missing and then examine the most troubling allegation found in the piece.

Hello everyone. Let's jump right into today's update.

Amazon Looking to Scale Back Devices Division

In an article published on November 10th, here are Dana Mattioli, Sebastian Herrera, and Jessica Toonkel for the WSJ:

“Amazon. com Inc. Chief Executive Andy Jassy is leading a cost-cutting review of the tech giant and paring back on businesses at the company that haven’t been profitable, according to people familiar with the matter.

As part of the monthslong cost-cutting review, Amazon’s leadership is closely evaluating its Alexa business, according to some of the people. The business has more than 10,000 employees and is a major recipient of investment capital, some of the people said. Internal documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal show that in some recent years Amazon’s devices unit, which includes Alexa, had an operating loss of more than $5 billion a year.”

Many people will read this article and conclude that Big Tech must see something on the economic horizon that other companies aren’t seeing yet. After years of heavy investment and betting big on devices and technology including Alexa, it took fears of a recession for Amazon to approach things differently.

My suspicion is that there is more to the story.

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