Amazon is great at a lot of things, but AI and Machine Learning aren't it. From what I saw when I worked there, they don't have the talent to produce their own models (which is, I think, what we all expected to see), but the surprising thing is that they haven't partnered yet.
> From what I saw when I worked there, they don't have the talent to produce their own models (which is, I think, what we all expected to see)
The talent is repeatedly run off by managers and executives who don't know how to manage talent. At this point, I'm convinced it's actually part of the Amazon culture to not excel at AI/ML. Mediocre, or else. It's so weird (and abusive) to be around. 10/10 not a rewarding place to work.
Personally I have always felt that AWS has too much of "manager culture" or something. But them missing AI train was crazy though.
I am personally more surprised that Microsoft did not miss that train with AI and now are pretty aggressive with integration of AI everywhere. Though I wonder if Microsoft would not have missed mobile and search if Nadella was CEO after Gates. Satya is ruthless. Even despite not being first in cloud, they still are able to compete with AWS.
It is happening all over industry. Those that can't adapt will be eaten by AI.
And AI is moving way too fast and the execs who took a wait and see approach are now in panic mode. AI tooling should be a straight forward investment regardless of outcome.
> the surprising thing is that they haven't partnered yet.
Amazon has a partnership with and investment in Anthropic, but I don't consider Anthropic to much good for various technical reasons not having to do with their model. Essentially, Anthropic is user-hostile in many ways. Also, Anthropic keeps spamming me daily with pointless legal changes, sneakingly adding marketing materials into their legal emails.
All these Sales people are extremely dangerous for AWS.
Adam Selipsky -> Was an Harvard MBA
Andy Jassy -> Joined as Marketing manager as Harvard MBA
Matt Garman -> Was first product manager of EC2 but also a business MBA
Jeff Bezos for all his slightly goofy style, graduated from Princeton with degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. In the meanwhile people like James Hamilton, Werner Vogels, or others that could look like their heirs are very, very invisible.
My prediction is that Jeff Bezos will be back within 2 to 3 years if not sooner.
Andy Jassy was the first product manager on AWS, and while there is lore debates whether he "came up" with the idea of AWS (probably not), he's been on it from the beginning and through every single product.
I don't know much about Selipsky or Garman, but Jassy absolutely was/is technical enough to get to AWS to where it was today (or know when not to get in the way of those more technical than him).
Watch any of his interviews from before he was Amazon CEO. The man knew his shit.
I don't dispute he is an excellent manager and an excellent CEO. But excellence is execution does not drive vision. The times demand a different profile, as AI is not there yet, but can within the next 24 months become really disruptive for many business models.
One example: Amazon generated $14.65 billion from its advertising services. And Google a gazillion more. But if I send an AI agent searching for me or shop on Amazon, they don't care about the ads.
Sundar Pichi has a degree in metallurgical engineering and M.S. in materials science and engineering from Stanford. So I would argue still an Engineer at heart. Yes he did an MBA but is the common track for engineers who want to go the management track.
I am not saying they should take over the role of managing thousands of people. But you need highly visible technical roles higher up in the food
chain, to drive technical decisions, who don't make sense on a financial excel sheet.
Let me give some concrete examples:
- Decisions like having the 3 availability zones, at a minimum, and with no exceptions,
for every Region, come up of minds like James Hamilton. They are driven first from an
ambition of technical quality, then you just tell the MBA's how much it will cost...
If you run it via an MBA they will just see it as a nice to have. And that is why for GCP or Azure
those are not always there.
- Decisions like the development of the Nitro System are again comming from
a quality ambition. Then again...you just tell the MBA's how much it will cost.
Did you notice since 2023 Amazon made over 30,000 layoffs including this year
by the hundreds within AWS? Technical roles who can find jobs at Netflix, Google
or OpenAI or Microsoft or others look...And make their conclusions...And yes many
of those are also doing layoffs
Wall Street is currently full of praise for the stunning balance sheet performance of Amazon, but Wall Street MBA's never see more than
the next quarter.
Now go listen to the available recording of Amazon last Q1 earnings call,
and amaze yourself with the softball questions, almost like a
battle of flowers, that earnings calls transformed themselves
into nowadays.
For example you will not hear the following critical questions, and for which there are no answers in the earnings release document, from any of the analysts in the call:
- How much of the net income growth can be attributed to
cost-cutting measures versus new business growth?
- What are the primary factors contributing to the much lower profitability
of the International segment compared to North America?
- What is Amazon's strategy for addressing the increasing competition
in the cloud computing market, particularly from companies
like Microsoft and Google?
They were later to the game but with Claude (anthropic) it does seem they were able to catch IP. I use Claude every day and prefer it over OpenAI's model
Not a big surprise. Garman has been working up to this for a while. It will be interesting to see how the VPs reshuffle and whether anyone else who thought they might get the CEO job leaves in a huff…
Garman was one of the first PMs at AWS. He was sent over to lead Sales/Marketing relatively recently to get demand side experience presumably in preparation to take over as CEO.
