
Amazon Says It Has Over 10k Employees Working on Alexa, Echo - deegles
https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-says-it-has-over-10-000-employees-working-on-alexa-echo-1542138284
======
m0zg
And those employees are doing a rather poor job on the AI side of things.
Hardware itself is OK, it hears me better than its Google counterpart thanks
to the phased microphone array. But both speech recognition and natural
language understanding are piss poor and other than ordering stuff from Amazon
and setting the time it's not useful for much, nor does it understand me in a
sufficiently high percentage of interactions, nor is it in any way
"conversational", the way Google Home is. Alexa app is also lackluster and
feels like it's held together by duct tape, like all other Amazon apps.

For me the quality of AI in this case outweighs the creep factor of Google.
FWIW, I replaced my Echo with a Google Home Mini.

Full disclosure: I'm an ex-Googler who nevertheless thinks that ads are
cancer, and pervasive tracking shouldn't be legal.

~~~
mattlondon
I have both a Google home and Amazon echo literally next to each other. I have
found that the Amazon device is really poor at hearing you.

The Google device I can talk to from any room in my apartment and it hears me
correctly 95% of the time, it even triggers and understands me if I am
brushing my teeth with an electronic toothbrush at the same time. It is
impressive.

The Amazon device on the other hand has a 50/50 chance of triggering, and I
often have to walk right up to it to clearly enunciate "computer" before it
wakes up. Not sure if this because I speak en-gb instead of en-us.

(I have both only because the Google one does not reliably work with Samsung
smartthings any more (it used to work fine!) but the Amazon one does. Amazon
one is also good for music but Google tries to sell you a YouTube
subscription. Google one is hugely better at random day to day
questions/queries/translation/usefulness etc - I guess that is b cause they
are a search engine and not an e-commerce site)

~~~
mitgraduate
Even Amazon's music search sucks. It can never find the song unless you
provide an accurate name. Its fuzzy matching sucks too, doesn't even account
for regional trend in songs.

~~~
m0zg
Apple's music search sucks too, especially if your music tastes are even
slightly outside the mainstream. It simply doesn't personalize per user, so
when I search, I have to wade through a list of unfamiliar band and musician
names until I type almost the whole thing. For a company whose motto once upon
a time was "design is how it works", this is inexcusable.

------
hanoz
I hope at least some of them are working on Alexa's seeming inability to do
any kind of learning on the go. For instance if, as you repeatedly inform me,
there's no station called Summer FM Groove Salad, then maybe, just maybe, I
mean _Soma_ FM Groove Salad, like the one in ten times you hear me correctly.

~~~
dangrover
This. I never tell Alexa to set a timer for 15 or 50 minutes (only 16 or 49)
due to tendency to confuse.

~~~
beatgammit
16 doesn't get confused with 60?

------
jclulow
I guess it takes a lot of people to listen to the accumulated recordings from
all of those people's living rooms!

~~~
verisimilidude
Wouldn't be the first time, won't be the last. For example...

[https://www.businessinsider.com/expensify-is-proud-to-use-
hu...](https://www.businessinsider.com/expensify-is-proud-to-use-humans-in-
its-automated-service-2017-11)

------
lawrenceyan
Amazon is a competently run technology company with smart people from my
limited experience. I wonder why Alexa is so much worse compared to Google
Assistant then.

Perhaps natural language processing / understanding applications aren’t as
well researched or developed at Amazon? Maybe it’s the difference in culture
between the two companies with Google being much more academic in nature and
research oriented compared to the more process oriented operations / logistics
focus of Amazon that has caused such a widening gap to build up?

~~~
partiallypro
Seems pretty simple to me, Google has more data and users that keep adding
even more data to optimize their offerings. I doubt Alexa has even 1/10th the
users as Google's assistant.

This is the unfortunate barrier to entry when it involves big data. Even
behemoths Amazon and Microsoft are stuck with smaller pools of voice data than
Apple or Google. It makes it very difficult to compete...imagine being an even
smaller player, you have no shot. If Amazon and Microsoft weren't cloud
competitors I bet they'd do a joint venture. They are already playing the most
friendly with each other.

~~~
CydeWeys
Amazon has still sold millions of these devices and thus has inordinate
amounts of data. When you're talking about training sets that are, say, 1
trillion large vs 10 trillion, does it really make that much of a difference?
It's diminishing returns. 10X the data size comes nowhere close to a 10X
difference in quality at that scale.

~~~
RestlessMind
I neither work on Alexa nor on Google Assistant. But based on my experience,
going from 99% accuracy to 99.9% would require much more data than 0.9%. Same
with adding each subsequent "9".

And the _perceived_ quality difference between 99% accuracy and 99.99%
accuracy is much much bigger.

~~~
frankchn
In my experience, like with high availability, each additional 9 requires
between double to 10x the resources to achieve.

------
walterbell
Has anyone tried to build an open-source voice assistant using the $100
Respeaker far-field mike array dev board,
[https://respeaker.io](https://respeaker.io) &
[http://wiki.seeedstudio.com/ReSpeaker_Core_v2.0/](http://wiki.seeedstudio.com/ReSpeaker_Core_v2.0/)?

 _> ReSpeaker Core v2.0 is designed for voice interface applications. It is
based on the Rockchip RK3229, a quad-core ARM Cortex A7, running up to 1.5GHz,
with 1GB RAM. The board features a six microphone array with speech algorithms
including DoA (Direction of Arrival), BF (Beam-Forming), AEC (Acoustic Echo
Cancellation), etc. ReSpeaker Core v2.0 runs a GNU/Linux operating system ...
Our BF and AEC algorithms are provided by Alango, a professional audio DSP
company used in the automotive industry._

Voice assistants are magical when they do-what-you-mean. If there was an
active OSS community for voice assistants, it would enable experimentation
with privacy-preserving architecture and customization for niche use cases and
language.

~~~
j88439h84
\-
[https://github.com/NaomiProject/Naomi](https://github.com/NaomiProject/Naomi)

\- [http://mycroft.ai](http://mycroft.ai)

\- [http://snips.ai](http://snips.ai)

~~~
walterbell
That reminds me that Google has DIY kits at Target, but they are designed as
Google service extensions.

[https://aiyprojects.withgoogle.com](https://aiyprojects.withgoogle.com)

------
warent
My guess is ~9950 of those employees just do data labeling.

~~~
DiabloD3
That still implies 50 of them are trying to make it seem like anything but a
toy.

I was given a Google Home Mini as a Christmas gift (the resident tech god for
most people's lives doesn't have one? what, how can this be!? someone
rectified that for me), and I've been toying with it... and its the Google
assistant in my phone, but in a stand alone device.

I mean, don't get me wrong, that's a lot more useful than people realize
because.... IT ACTUALLY WORKS. Ridiculously loud kitchen fan hood roaring
along at levels that are probably considered unsafe by OSHA standards? "Hey
Google, do the thing." "Okay, I'm doing the thing." Upstairs, far away from
it? Not even yelling at it, it understands me reasonably and does things
alarmingly often.

The best impossible magic? "Okay Google, turn my television off." My
Chromecast is not named "television" nor "my television", is only referenced
in my Home config as the default TV for that room (of which the TV and Mini
share), and somehow turns the TV off even though the Chromecast does not
expose this functionality anywhere in the Home app (and was assumed to only
know how to issue exactly one HDMI CEC command (turn TV on and switch input to
here) due to some undocumented and strange hardware issue... hundreds of
threads across the Internet all about how can they turn the TV off even though
they can turn the TV on, none of them ever figuring out how to issue CEC off
or even if the Chromecast can... it can, and the assistant in my tiny speakers
knows how to issue this probably undocumented command to the Chromecast).

My experience with Alexa? Ideal listening conditions, no background noise,
only me talking. "Alexa, do the skill that you know how to do and is
advertised in the commercials on TV, any off them." "I'm not quite sure how to
help you with that".

~~~
shimylining
I have been using Alexa for years. I've been controlling my TV and I have WiFi
smart plugs. It is super useful and it has never had issues understanding what
I was saying.

I have noticed people who have issues they place the device next to a sound
source such as a TV or fan or something and obviously this will mess it up.

I also don't understand why so much hate for Alexa. Everyone in this thread
just seems like a Debbie downer, shi*ing on everything all the time.

~~~
atdt
I'll give you a concrete example. The primary light fixture in my small
apartment is a standing lamp in the corner of the living room. I bought a
smart plug for the lamp and during set-up I chose the name "lamp", since that
is what we call it (in our household you don't have to say /which/ lamp, since
it's obvious). Now, Alexa doesn't know what to do if I ask it to "turn off the
light", which is disappointing enough, but it also fails to understand "turn
off the lamp" \-- instead I have to remember to drop the 'the' and say "turn
off lamp", which is so unnatural. It feels like I have to bend and deform
natural language into something Alexa can parse, which is the exact opposite
of what assistants promise to do.

~~~
wkearney99
Well, naming devices for voice control is more tedious than you'd think. You
have one device that you named poorly. Try having a house with over 150
devices! Naming matters. Putting a little thought into it makes a big
difference in usability.

I've got one that gets used everyday. It's named "Breakfast Table". 'Alexa,
turn on Breakfast Table' works quite reliably. Now, am I actually turning on
the table? No, of course not, but that rolls off the tongue a lot better than
"Alexa, turn off pendant lamp over the breakfast table". Or recessed ceiling
cans as opposed to just "living room ceiling". We really don't have many
devices with 'lamp' or 'light' as part of their name. Because we're not really
asking for control over a light, we're asking for light for an activity at a
location.

But there still ends up being a few that are clunky. "Family room endtable"
for a reading lamp near that end of the sectional, or 'Family room sofa" for
the two on a console table behind the other part. Haven't hit upon better
names for those. Activity naming is an option but we really don't call for
lighting in a scene oriented kind of way. Some folks seem to like that, go
figure.

Bearing in mind with an open floorplan just about everything on a level is
within line of sight and earshot. The placing of multiple Alexa devices took a
little fine tuning to overcome reflection from lots of wood and drywall
surfaces. That allows for unexpected pickup. Oh, the units handle avoiding
overlap with each other, but sometimes facing one way in a room leads to the
sound being picked up by the one in that direction. As you'd expect sound
waves would travel. But without a LOT more intrusive sensors (cameras, motion,
position) it's handling things remarkably well just with voice.

The great tragedy is the leap to conclusions people make. "Promise to do"....
where? By whom?

Oh, you want a TV cartoon equivalent of Rosie the Robot... we're not there
yet. But given the hilariously low price point for these devices, we're
getting quite a lot of bang for the buck in the meanwhile.

------
Zaheer
W/o Paywall: [https://outline.com/vqmqwg](https://outline.com/vqmqwg)

This org could be it's own company (like many other Amazon orgs)! For context,
number of employees at:

    
    
      Motorola (2014): 40,000
      Nvidia: 11,528
      AMD: 8,900

~~~
njharman
I bet there are more Alexa customers than nvidia ones. And way more than
direct AMD ones.

~~~
kevinventullo
Amazon has sold about 35 million Echo units, which is a little under half of
the total number of PlayStation 3 units sold to date, each of which has an
Nvidia GPU in it.

~~~
new_guy
100 million, they released numbers the other day
[https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonecho/comments/ad2drt/100_mill...](https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonecho/comments/ad2drt/100_million_alexa_devices_have_been_sold_yes/)

~~~
devoply
1 employee per 10,000 echos doesn't seem like much.

------
curiousDog
And yet, Google has way better speech recognition than Alexa.

~~~
Baeocystin
I'm surprised at the number of people saying there's a noticeable difference.
I've been using Dots for a few months, now, and it pretty much understands me
every time, even with the vent hood of the range on, etc.

I did have one odd error, where when I named one of my lamps 'halogen', Alexa
would always ask back "did you mean halogen?" with the exact same
pronunciation I had used. Then proceed to turn it off or on like I'd asked in
the first place. This struck me as more of a bug than anything else, and I
worked around it by just using a different name. But still, if that's the only
listening error I've dealt with after several months' use, I'm impressed.

~~~
B1FF_PSUVM
> when I named one of my lamps 'halogen', Alexa would always ask back "did you
> mean halogen?" with the exact same pronunciation I had used.

Maybe due to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-dropping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-dropping)
?

~~~
Baeocystin
An interesting thought. In my case, though, I live and work in the bay area of
California, so no H-dropping, and the accent I use is probably the one that is
the most common in terms of use for a training set.

(I was saying 'hale-oh-gen', as was Alexa, FWIW. Now I'm curious if others can
repeat the same error!)

------
arikr
Does anyone have an approx breakdown by role?

e.g. how many software engineers vs how many data labelers

or how many are full-time vs contractors, etc

------
RIMR
10,000 people, any my Echo still doesn't understand the difference between any
of my smarthome devices that contain the word "lamp" in their names.

------
kureikain
I have many alexa devices in my home and I love it. They solve lot of problem
for us. From automate my home to a speaker(via bluetooth).

But one thing concern me a lot is Alexa is constantly stream/read data to
internet. I'm not sure what it's but it consume to 114Mbps per device.

With that huge data it is sending back to Alexa, I imagine they may have a
huge team of scientist to work on it.

One thing I noticed is Alexa understand my broken English way better than my
wife(native). Probably I have speak to it to much and it learned my voice.

~~~
burtonator
It's massively insane that people put microphones into their house and
willingly stream all conversations to a private 3rd party in exchange for
minor convenience.

~~~
marcinzm
>all conversations

I believe Alexa only streams what you say after the trigger word and not all
conversations. Assuming you believe Amazon.

~~~
ekianjo
if its technically possible to do it without you knowing then all that is left
is how much you trust Amazon with that. Note that Amazon may have to surrender
its devices access to three letters agencies for random reasons as well. You
have to live with that assumption.

~~~
JaRail
It's widely understood how the wake-word system works. You can monitor how
much data is being uploaded and when. So no, it's not possible to just stream
everything you say undetected.

~~~
pvorb
I believe 99 percent of Alexa users wouldn't notice the increased data usage.
If "three letter agencies" carefully choose who they spy on, it might go
undetected for a very long time.

~~~
discodave
If a three letter agency is interested in _you_ then you would be lucky if
your Alexa is the best bugging device they have.

------
bsenftner
Seems like an 80/20 rule might apply here: 8K of them are in marketing, with
the remaining 2K also being split 80/20 to 1,600 tech/infrastructure support
and 400 actual ML/AI, device & application developers.

------
yegle
Alexa seems to not understand simple questions like "current temperature in
Celsius" which is really a deal breaker for me.

(I don't own any Alexa device but when I visit Seattle they have one in the
room).

------
mr_custard
I don't care how many people they have working on Alexa or Echo - those things
will _never_ be allowed inside my house. Massive security risk.

~~~
JacobJans
Do you have a smart phone? It's not any different.

Edit: But it also constantly tracks your location and has a built in camera.

~~~
millstone
Has there ever been a documented case of a smart phone randomly burst out in
creepy laughter or sending private conversations to random contacts?

~~~
tirpen
Here is Android sending private conversations to random contacts:
[https://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/01/06/android-
sms](https://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/01/06/android-sms)

------
aviv
My 6yo son thinks Alexa is an actual person... he might be on to something.

~~~
erikig
I wonder if any of the 10,000 people are actually named Alexa, and if so do
they get any preferential treatment?

~~~
monk_e_boy
I always feel sorry for all the Alexas. And the Harry Potters who were living
their lives just fine before the books.

My friend is named Tressa Green. Her dad assured me he had no idea that most
people pronounced Tres-sa as Tree-sa.

[edit] this is a fun read:
[https://www.radiotimes.com/news/film/2018-03-22/meet-the-
rea...](https://www.radiotimes.com/news/film/2018-03-22/meet-the-real-life-
muggles-named-harry-potter/)

~~~
stuart_marshall
If you look at the lists of ranked baby names by year, you'll see a massive
drop off of Alexas about when Amazon shipped.

------
dbrgn
If those 10k employees earn 90k$ on average, that would be 900 million dollars
per year just for salaries.

The echo dot costs 30$.

I'm sure Amazon just wants to make a great user-centric product and will not
agressively violate your privacy to make more money! </sarcasm>

------
IloveHN84
How many of them are working on tagging manually the audio tracks for machine
learning?

------
40acres
Amazon must have a very decentralized recruiting methodology because I've been
contacted by recruiters for Alexa at least 4 times.

It seems like Alexa, Go, and AWS have massive staffing targets based on my
interactions w/ recruiters.

~~~
stuart_marshall
Yes, every group in Amazon has its own recruiters who largely find candidates
independently. However, Amazon does have a good central database of everybody
who is contacted, who last talked with them, what happened with the contact,
etc. And they're usually pretty good about having only one group active with a
candidate at a time.

------
cruella_deville
the link below points to the source code for alexa based personal assistants
in a can.
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=..).
you can also access alexa by browser, but you need to sign in

[https://www.amazon.com/ap/signin?showRmrMe=1&openid.return_t...](https://www.amazon.com/ap/signin?showRmrMe=1&openid.return_t..).

there is also a way of saddling an SDcard into the echodot debug port and
booting whatever you have put on the SD thus you may run custom boot up on the
dot and hax around.

[https://medium.com/@micaksica/exploring-the-amazon-echo-
dot-...](https://medium.com/@micaksica/exploring-the-amazon-echo-dot-..).

[https://medium.com/@micaksica/exploring-the-amazon-echo-
dot-...](https://medium.com/@micaksica/exploring-the-amazon-echo-dot-..).

One of the most interesting things to get into is the MP3files that make up
the dots responses to you, writing your own skills is cool too.

and here are a bunch of fidjitty tricks to do to your dot.

[https://hackaday.com/?s=echo+dot](https://hackaday.com/?s=echo+dot)

------
guard0g
Wow. Is the software that complex that it takes 10k employees to work with
it?!! :)

~~~
testplzignore
Me: That's a pretty complex thing to build. I'm guessing it'll take about 12
months.

Management: Great! We'll hire 10000 people and have it done before lunch!

Me: ...

------
sys_64738
Do people like having these devices in their house? Don't you feel like
they're listening to everything you say? My wife says these will never be
allowed in my house.

~~~
brokenmachine
Your wife is wise. I won't have one in my house either. It's crazy to me that
anyone would be ok with them post Snowden revelations.

------
notsofastbuddy
Is there any public info on the numbers for Google and Apple?

~~~
saagarjha
Apple likely has fewer people in their entire software engineering
organization; they generally hire fewer people than you’d expect for most
projects.

------
rhlala
Really hudge, how they are going to make it very lucrative? Monthly payment?
Or sponsored hidden ads?

------
tomwilshere
And it's still no match for Google.

------
908087
Once Amazon/Google/etc manage to get their audio surveillance embedded into
every device on earth, will breathing oxygen and speaking aloud be considered
"agreeing to Amazon/Google/etc privacy policies"?

