this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
35 points (94.9% liked)

Technology

72212 readers
3373 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Amazon terminates iRobot deal, Roomba maker to lay off 31% of staff::Amazon and iRobot said regulatory concerns made it impossible for the deal to move forward, sending the Roomba makers' shares plummeting.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] tenextrathrills@lemmynsfw.com 13 points 1 year ago (3 children)

If it’s any consolation those people would have been laid off no matter what happened. That’s how we do things now apparently

[–] nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 year ago

They fired their whole education wing when my startup was just starting to work with them (15 or something years ago). No warning just a month after starting a new project (early stem outreach type program), fired them all.

So I don’t feel bad for iRobot. Sucks for the employees though.

Gotta artificially drive the cost of labor down somehow. All those poor folk started getting some wild ideas that they were worth something....

[–] Copernican@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

iRobot said it would focus on margin improvements, reduce spending on research and development, and pause all work on “non-floorcare” products, including its air purifiers and robotic lawn mowers.

I doubt it. If you are stopping r&d and killing whole product lines, it makes sense to lay off the teams directly tied to those product lines. I'm guessing they needed Amazon to help them break into the market for areas outside of floor vacuums?

[–] Clent@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

They should definitely dump air purifiers. What does that have to do with robotics?

Lawn mowers however seem like a stupid drop, since a lawn is floor adjacent and the market in them is growing.

[–] tenextrathrills@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Call me a skeptic but I’d be willing to bet small amounts of money that Amazon would absolutely lay some or all of these people off after the initial onboarding.

Fold home automation IP into Alexa brand, keep iRobot vacuum brand but increase data exfiltration, and put ads on all searches to increase sales, layoff the ~~scrubs~~ R&D team would be the natural playbook.