GeekWire

Our guest this week, Ashley Stewart, is a Seattle-based senior tech correspondent for the news site Insider who reports on Microsoft and Amazon. She and her colleagues reported on Amazon’s executive exodus and its internal deliberations about compensation in advance of the increase in maximum base pay announced by the company this week. After the announcement, they reported on internal docum...

Amazon informed employees about a major change coming to their pay structure Monday morning . The company raised the cap for its base pay to $350,000 as part of its larger package of stock and cash compensation for corporate and tech employees. The maximum base pay has long been $160,000. The move has implications not only for Amazon employees but for the broader tech industry.  Garry Straker...

This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Amazon's latest results demonstrated its extraordinary flexibility and ability to overcome challenges in the broader economy using the built-in safeguards in its business, most notably the Amazon Web Services cash machine. Amazon spent an extra $4 billion to keep its business running smoothly despite a clogged economy. Plus, Microsoft hires an Amazon veteran to t...

The latest jaw-dropping deal in video games is Sony Interactive Entertainment's agreement to buy Bellevue, Wash.-based Bungie , maker of the Destiny  series of online multiplayer first-person shooter games, originally known for developing Halo for Microsoft's Xbox. Bungie was spun out of Microsoft in 2007 and has operated as an independent company in the meantime. It's expected to be an indep...

Data journalist and entrepreneur Sherrell Dorsey is a Seattle native whose story is a powerful testament to the potential of kids in overlooked communities, and to the possibilities that emerge when their paths are cleared. Dorsey is founder and CEO of The Plug , a venture-backed news and insights platform covering Black startups and ecosystems. Her new book is Upper Hand: The Future of Work for t...

Hope Cochran, managing director at venture capital firm Madrona Venture Group in Seattle, was previously the chief financial officer of King Digital, the maker of Candy Crush and other hit mobile games. She led King through its initial public offering in 2014, and its $5.9 billion acquisition in early 2016 by Activision Blizzard. That gives her a unique perspective on Microsoft's deal this week to...

So much of what happens in the startup world comes from serendipitous moments, random interactions that lead to fresh insights and new collaborations. And so much of that has traditionally happened at events, meetups, coffee meetings, and other in-person gatherings. Two years into the pandemic and remote work, what are the implications? That's our first topic on this episode of the GeekWire Podcas...

Alexa, open the pod bay doors. Amazon's voice assistant hasn't quite reached the level of HAL, the iconic AI from 2001: A Space Odyssey . However, we learned this week that Alexa is going to space later this year , and around the moon, for a technology demonstration on the Orion deep-space capsule as part of NASA’s Artemis 1 mission. Veteran space reporter Alan Boyle, GeekWire contributing e...

This year was a bit of a blur — fighting through waves of Delta and Omicron. But there was other important news this year, too. And before we wave goodbye to 2021, we thought it would be fun to test your geek knowledge. Spoiler alert: we give the answers as we go, so if you want to test your knowledge first, you can take an interactive version of the quiz in the post for this episode at...

Looking at GeekWire’s most-read stories for 2021, this series of headlines stands out as a symbol of the past year, not just for Amazon but for the world at large. March 31, 2021:   Amazon updates remote work guidance, plans to ‘return to an office-centric culture as our baseline’ June 10, 2021:   Amazon adjusts return-to-office guidance, says employees can work two day...

This week on the GeekWire Podcast: How the pandemic is changing attitudes toward work, jobs, geography. Plus, the market for IPOs and acquisitions, and the future of downtown Seattle from the perspective of a newly public company. Our guest, Zig Serafin, has a unique window into all of these topics as the CEO of Qualtrics , the experience management technology company based in Seattle and Provo, U...

This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Is the world relying too much on Amazon Web Services? We assess the fallout from the big AWS outage , which was the subject of a detailed explanation from the company Friday night . Plus, what's your AI IQ? We test our own artificial intelligence literacy in a new online quiz from the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Seattle . Read more in this stor...

This week: how the pandemic, politics, labor shortages, and the rise of remote work are impacting U.S. immigration in the tech industry and beyond — and how ongoing challenges in the system could be putting the country's future at risk. Our guest is Xiao Wang , CEO and co-founder of Boundless , a Seattle technology company that streamlines the immigration process.  Related Stories and L...

This was a week when many of us in the U.S. paused to reflect and give thanks. We're keeping the tradition on the GeekWire Podcast. On this special holiday episode, we offer our gratitude for some of the technologies, trends and hopeful developments of the past year, as reflected in news coverage on GeekWire. Hosted by GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook. Produced and edited by Curt Mil...

Can you believe Xbox has been around for 20 years? Our guest on this week's GeekWire Podcast, Robbie Bach , was there at the beginning, and led Microsoft’s gaming business for many years as Chief Xbox Officer and President of the company's Entertainment & Devices Division.  These days, Bach is board chair of the Bipartisan Policy Center , a Washington, D.C.–based think tank th...

The downfall of Zillow's iBuying business is a reminder of the downsides of relying too much on automation and machine learning algorithms at this stage in the evolution of technology. A conversation about the pitfalls of real estate valuations leads John Cook and Todd Bishop into a larger discussion about the continued importance of human judgment and attention in the modern world. Plus, cat vs....

Jane Park, the CEO of newly public Athena Consumer Acquisition Corp., hadn't imagined herself leading a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, before accepting the job. She decided to consider the pitch from venture capitalist Isabelle Freidheim for one reason. “It took some convincing, a little bit. I wasn’t sure if I had the right capabilities. I have always sat on the entrepr...

This week on the GeekWire Podcast ... We dissect Amazon's earnings , offering our take on Andy Jassy's take on the company's latest predicament . We assess a major Microsoft milestone, as the Redmond company surpasses Apple to become the world's most valuable company again . We look forward to the Metaverse , but question whether Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook friends are the right people to tak...

Everyone is closely monitoring the implications of remote work as we emerge from the pandemic, so it's no surprise that one of the most widely read stories on GeekWire this week — right behind the Titanic's disappearing bathtub and Facebook's potential name change — was a story on trends in tech salaries.  Two big trends stood out in the report from jobs site Hired : Average tech...

This week on the GeekWire Podcast: a new Microsoft leader finally gets to work, Amazon makes a surprising change in its remote work policy, and the promise of space for the tech industry. Our guest commentator is Charlie Kindel , who worked for many years as a Microsoft general manager in areas including its server and mobile businesses, before jumping into the world of startups and then endi...

This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we’re sharing a few highlights from the GeekWire Summit, our annual business and technology conference, which we held this week for an audience in Seattle and online. For online access to the full video of every GeekWire Summit 2021 session, purchase a ticket at geekwire.com/summit to watch at your convenience.  On this week's show: Computer scientist...

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella this week called the company's unsuccessful efforts to acquire TikTok's U.S. operations last year "the strangest thing" he's ever worked on. Brad Smith, Microsoft's president and newly named vice chair, laughed when he read that — agreeing with the sentiment, even if he has seen stranger things in his two decades representing the tech giant in its dealings with co...

Come on, how much has really changed in Windows 11 vs. Windows 10? To paraphrase a certain Spinal Tap guitarist , is it really worthy of taking it up to eleven? Kevin Stratvert hears that question all the time, and based on his experience so far, his answer is yes. Stratvert is a former Microsoft program manager who left the company to focus full-time on his work as a YouTube creator, producing ho...

Fred Moody is a retired journalist in the Seattle area, the former managing editor of Seattle Weekly, and the author of a series on Kindle Vella, Amazon’s new episodic storytelling platform for mobile devices. It's called Barfly on the Wall: A meteoric misadventure into Seattle bartending .   GeekWire's Todd Bishop has been looking into Kindle Vella and other story platforms as a r...

Jason Stoffer was still early in his career at venture capital firm Maveron in 2012 when he declined an opportunity to invest in Remitly , then a fledgling Seattle startup with ambitions to challenge Western Union by bringing a tech mindset to the business of international money transfers. He was impressed by Remitly co-founders Matt Oppenheimer and Josh Hug but knew they faced a huge challenge in...