The problem with Alexa isn’t technology or product design. It’s the organizational issues. It was a bloated team with over 10000 people. After a decade of investment, they had no real business model. They may have had decent engineers and scientists, but lots of managers and executives got promoted to very high levels despite showing zero results, mostly based on the size of their teams. Those empire builders then moved around the company and industry, leaving behind a wasteland.
This is an industry-wide problem. The solution is not to overhire and crack down on these empire bulders, but this means fewer FAANG jobs. Engineers have to pick their poison.
