Amazon and iRobot said regulatory concerns made it impossible for the deal to move forward, sending the Roomba makers' shares plummeting.

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.

  • tenextrathrills@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
    11·
    5 months ago

    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.deEnglish
      3·
      5 months 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.

    • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      5 months ago

      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.worldEnglish
      1·
      5 months ago

      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?

      • tenextrathrills@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
        1·
        5 months ago

        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.

        • EmergMemeHologram@startrek.websiteEnglish
          1·
          5 months ago

          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.