Amazon’s Next Mission: Using Alexa to Help You Pay Friends | Hacker News Reader

Amazon’s Next Mission: Using Alexa to Help You Pay Friends

wsj.com

33 pointsSREinSF56 comments

The problem with everyone getting into "pay your friends" is that everyone wants to be paid in a different way and you need a dozen different accounts. And it seems like everyone wants to help you pay your friends these days.

This is fully generalizable to all kinds of software nowadays.

The problem with everyone getting into "[SOFTWARE PRODUCT]" is that everyone wants to [DO THIS SOFTWARE THING] in a different way and you need a dozen different accounts. And it seems like everyone wants to help you [DO THIS SOFTWARE THING] these days.

It’s like Beta vs VHS, with 3-20 incompatible competitors, over and over and over for eternity.

Then someone comes in and says “we need [software thing] as a protocol like email” and then someone invents [software thing] as a protocol and now everyone on HN wonders why no one uses [software thing] as a protocol despite its obvious superiority.

And this is why in China it’s a breath of fresh air; everyone (almost literally) has WeChat and it is trivial to send money to another person.

I find it perplexing how Amazon is churning out new products so quickly. How do they do it?

AWS is radical in this way too! New products are launching constantly.

It might be because of the crazy hiring spree they are just beginning to curb https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/12/amazon-is-cutting-hundreds...

They apparently work developers to the bone and use they’re name to easily backfill with above average talent.

> to the bone

You would work to the bone too if you were getting rich off of AMZN stock options.

If anyone but upper management was getting AMZN stock options. Everyone else gets RSUs and the RSU vesting rates are ridiculous. 4 years to be able to vest less than 50% of my options? And then at the end of those 4 years the only people getting increased comp rates are management?

You can fuck right off, Benzos.

As well as the annual "bonus." It's not a bonus. It's a stack of money on a string that they'll pull away from you if you leave before the year's up.

Crunch time isn't worth it for half of what Adobe would be paying me.

If you don't like your situation at Amazon, by all means take the Adobe job. Nobody has nailed you to your desk.

Saying that I'm crucified to the coffee table that's referred to as a Desk (TM) around here, would be an understatement.

Ever since G's cronies have been revising the "non-solicitations."

There is no annual bonus at Amazon. Just a sign on bonus.

Also your initial stock grant vests 100% after 4 years. 5, 15, 40, 40

Your facts are all wrong

Five on one hundred. Fifteen on ninety five. Forty on eighty and three fourths. Forty on forty and forty-five hundredths. Then twenty on thirty eight and seventy six hundredths. Ad infinitum -- IF your performance is "up to par." Pro-tip: Very rarely is it ever.

Your stock options will never be fully vested. At around 8 years you'll be nearing 100%. That is, if you're: not fired/dead from exhaustion/dead from others.

You get an annual "bonus" as well. It's not a bonus and it's not called that. It's an advance on salary. It's the justification for your lower-compared-to-industry salary. It's null too if you're gone before the year is up.

So no, sir. Your facts are wrong.

> Your stock options will never be fully vested.

You're still making money off of the vested portion of the options if you exercise them.

You seem to be claiming you're forced to stay since you aren't 100% vested. This sounds more like golden handcuffs than crucifixion to your desk.

Apparently your problem is Amazon stock keeps going up, so you're loathe to leave. Leaving my last job was easy since the stock options were underwater :-) glub glub. Your problem is one I would have liked to have.

I think you have your facts wrong. Amazon issues RSUs not options. The same process is used for essentially all employees. The annual proxy report describes the process for the top execs (Jassy, Wilke, Blackburn) and it is identical to the process for a L4 SDE.

New hires get RSUs that vest at 12 months, 24 months, 30 months, 36 months, 42 months, and 48 months after they start. These are 5%, 15%, 20%, 20%, 20%, and 20%, respectively, of the total initial RSU grant. It doesn't change.

You do get more RSUs in future years, but that does not impact the vesting schedule of the initial grant.

There is no annual bonus at Amazon. You get 1/12 of your base salary each month. New hires get additional cash each month for the first two years (usually more in the first year), but that is the sign-on bonus. It isn't an advance.

The only case I know of that does not match the above is for sales reps -- this is a limited set of people and I doubt that many are reading HN.

I don’t mean to feed the troll but the schedule is hardly a secret and is 5%/15%/40%/40% (20% per 6 months in the last two years), so they have vested 60% at 3 years.

Have you redeemed your options? Do you know vesting rate is on adjusted (logarithmic) and not gross (cumulative)? Do you know you have to give notice before you redeem them? Do you know your options become null if you're terminated? Do you know what they call people around here that redeem their options?

Your previous post wasn’t clear if you were talking about options or RSUs. It jumped from one to the other like you were describing the same thing.

Obviously there is an additional mystery world of option grants at Amazon that we aren’t aware of.

Amazon as a whole is willing to try things that might fail[1]. Yes I work at Amazon, yes it sounds a bit cultish, so be it. When people aren't afraid of losing their jobs because of one product misstep it's a lot easier to deliver stuff quickly. Instead of getting bogged down in endless meetings debating hypotheticals you can ship an MVP and get real customer feedback about whether the decision was correct. Every company pays lip service to taking smart risks but few actually follow through on it.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2016/04/05/jeff-bezos-c...

How does working on things that might fail sound cultish? I think that's pretty typical

I meant that it sounds cultish to hype on the "great place to fail" line. It reads like recruiter BS to me, but happens to be pretty accurate.

https://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/12/28/13889840/amazon-inn...

"… experiments start small and grow over time … Amazon creates a small team to experiment with the idea and find out if it’s viable. Bezos famously instituted the “two-pizza team” rule, which says that teams should be small enough to be fed with two pizzas … new teams get limited funding and clear milestones; if a team succeeds in smaller challenges, it’s given more resources and a larger challenge to tackle.

… Amazon doesn’t spend too much time on internal testing. “They prioritize launching early over everything else,” … Bezos has been fanatical about letting teams operate independently of one another … discouraged the kind of standardization you see at companies like Google and Apple, encouraging teams to operate independently using whatever technology makes the most sense … to make Amazon a modular, flexible organization with a minimum of company-wide policies.

That has made Amazon’s internal culture somewhat chaotic and balkanized. An engineer on one Amazon project can’t easily jump to another the way they can at Google or Apple. Friction between teams with different cultures may explain why some people find Amazon a stressful place to work. But this chaotic culture is also hospitable to innovation. A new team can use the tools and processes that make the most sense instead of feeling pressure to conform to company-wide standards."

I disagree with:

> can’t easily jump to another the way they can at Google or Apple.

I've never worked at Google or Apple, but I work in AWS. I see people switching teams, across different organizations within AWS and the retail business. When I first started, you had to stay on your team for 1 year before you could transfer, now there is no such restriction.

I will agree with the

> encouraging teams to operate independently using whatever technology makes the most sense

I also work in AWS and will agree with,

>Friction between teams with different cultures may explain why some people find Amazon a stressful place to work

It can be incredibly difficult working with other teams, but hat's not unique to Amazon.

Mostly just that in general it's a very stressful place to work regardless of being an engineer or other role there.

From what I know have seen some of this is just an illusion. Alexa has been around for a while. The idea must have been around for a while. It probably doesn't take them any less than it'd take anyone. I don't think there's a mystery to the engineering side.

"Amazon's Next Mission" is just marketing speak.

To their credit, they are willing to invest in expanding their products and finding adjacent markets. That's really hard for companies to do and where Amazon seems a little different in the way they don't seem to care at all about profit. If you don't care about profit you can do a lot of things that otherwise are difficult.

While I’ve never used any of these services (I just use cash, or a bank transfer if someone pays for hotel rooms or something), surely most use-cases are when out and about, not when in the living room with your talking speaker thing?

Speaker thingy is just one interface, your mobile also can talk to Alexa.

Humanizing the Alexa service is a huge sign of our downfall.

Don't let them do this to us.

That's not humanizing, it's slang. When describing some network operations non-technically, one might say that device A "talks to" device B

For what it's worth, you can do this today with Google Pay with Google assistant on a phone[0]. It works on iOS and Android today[1].

[0] https://support.google.com/pay/send/answer/7544913

[1] https://venturebeat.com/2018/03/22/google-assistant-can-now-...

(Disclaimer: I work on payments at Google)

Same with Siri and Apple Pay.

Amazon does this kind of thing all the time and most people just forget the times that it fails.

https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/30/amazon-shutting-do...

Not all of them actually pan out. Similar story for Etsy competition. (Amazon launched "handmade" in 2015 and kinda maybe relaunched last year. It might have more success this time).

Amazon might have a better time trying to buy PayPal (for venmo) or Square (for Cash App and to compete in the field they already gave up on). It would be amusing if this announcement was calculated to hit their stock price for a cheaper acquisition. That's probably way too cheeky, but for a lot of markets, Amazon has had more success acquiring than building their own.

No way Amazon could buy PayPal. Their customer service is the polar opposite, it'd be a giant culture clash.

When doing buy-outs or acquisations, how often do company consider culture-class as an obstacle? I would think thats not even brought up during discussion.

For a startup, it might make sense. Not for large established companies.

It is much easier to do it through Alexa than let’s say HN. It ties to an account with each person and they are all known to the company. Payments are scary between strangers. The more data you have, the cheaper you can process safely.

They literally have no differentiation here vs. Messenger Square Pay or Google Pay or Venmo. So much metoo in this thing.

Can you ask a smart speaker to pay someone else by name using any of those services?

It begs the question - exactly what kind of problem does paying with a smart speaker solve over just using your phone? Also, how much is that worth to you?

The central question for Amazon is not “what problem does this solve?” but “does this feature or product delight customers” and “how does this generate more revenue for Amazon?” With this in mind, the feature accomplishes both: customer have demonstrated the desire to pay or their friends and family (by the popularity of Venmo and others) while the funds will then be available to purchase items on Amazon.

https://archive.fo/uJHYp

Is venmo the hotness everywhere, or is this just an NYC thing? We venmo everything.

Venmo is owned by PayPal

Venmo was all anyone I know used at college in Indiana and seems pretty popular in Seattle too

Nope, it's an everyone young people under 25 (or so) thing.

The payments holy trinity is Venmo, Tab, and Splitwise.

Tab is for splitting specific checks with easy itemization and multi-person selection + easy tip calculations, connects with Venmo. Mobile app only.

Splitwise is great for running tabs, traveling in groups, or complex splits. Keeps track of who paid and who split and even simplifies to the fewest number of payments, of course also done by Venmo. Great desktop site with a good mobile app as well.

The only thing I'm waiting for is to import a Tab bill into Splitwise!

I live in NYC and have never used Venmo before (and am over 25). It is just cash, credit or checks (ugh) for me.

How do you split a check at a restaurant with a group?

I usually just pay it all myself, or someone volunteers to do so, and we all say we’ll take turns.

Venmo has a big lead.

But Square's Cash App has been gaining ground and is now more popular in some southern states. The ability to get a debit card hugely increases the value to the under-banked. It also makes generating revenue much easier for Square.

Right now, Cash app has been #1 in iTunes finance section for a few months and is consistently ahead in Google play's free app ranking.

That is a good idea. Sending money through voice is very natural.

Disclaimer: I worked in AWS.

Explain? I wouldn't trust speech recognition software with money personally.

People didn't trust computers with money either. Then they didn't trust phone-shaped computers with money.

You can be asked for confirmation. Nbd.

In a Hacker News spirit - wait for an article titled “malware screaming - Alexa, pay jfirbxhsnxbd at gmail dot com one hundred bucks now - in the raise”

bitcoin payments are next maybe?

Why not use cash?

Hard to do exact change and I don’t want to owe anyone or be owed anything. We go out to dinner and the bill is $71.53 split four ways — would rather not use cash for that.

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