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back to article Amazon Prime hot air drone service goes a-recruiting

Online retail monolith Amazon is recruiting for Prime Air - the much-hyped future delivery paradigm whose modest aim is to "get packages into customers' hands in 30 minutes or less using unmanned aerial vehicles". Jobs up for grabs include a software development engineer who'll need "superb technical, research and analytical …

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  1. SuperTim

    Vague job descriptions...

    -- Candidates should preferably be "comfortable with dealing with ambiguity and able to form a cohesive and effective outcome from potentially incongruous facts (or lack thereof) and individual perspectives".

    I have worked (and currently work) for people who have absolutely no idea what they want, short of a 3 word brief which skirts around any detail at all. They then suffix this abysmal brief with the phrase "I know I'm being challenging, but..."

    So maybe I should apply. I would be comfortable with such vagueries!

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    1. VinceH
      Reply Icon

      Re: Vague job descriptions...

      That sounds perfectly normal to me.

      Sadly.

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    2. Irongut
      Reply Icon

      Re: Vague job descriptions...

      A three word brief? I'd love a three word brief, my current project doesn't even have that and its driving me up the wall.

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  2. Jon Green
    Black Helicopters

    Nice to see they're keeping it alive!

    ...the hype, that is. Nothing like posting a job advert to get the media pumped about the vapourware, if it drives sales. (Reputedly - directly from Amazon sources - the Air campaign did astonishing things for their Christmas sales figures.)

    Amazon can afford to punt the money for the developer and the PR, and write both down to promotional expenses.

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  3. Mtech25
    Mushroom

    For Some reason

    I can't get the idea out of my head that Bomber Harris would be the best man for the job.

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  4. jb99

    The thing with drones...

    They have no chance at all of being used for general deliveries to most people.

    But that doesn't mean it's useless.

    Imagine a rural area in the middle of the USA. I can imagine it working eventually for deliveries to isolated houses for example.

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    1. Suricou Raven
      Reply Icon

      Re: The thing with drones...

      Drones don't have the range for rural use, though.

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  5. Your alien overlord - fear me

    How can a drone get anywhere in 30 minutes? Will they do like pizza shops do, after 30 minutes it's free?

    Better use those old ICBMs - multiple warheads (filled with books and Civet coffee) would be a better idea.

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    Prereq

    They will know what you want before you do, they will shift (old-style) "hots" to the town centre meshspot (that were previously closed shops) based on the probability of sales. You can order for £25 with delivery in a few days, pick up from your local mesh next day at £28 or have it delivered within two hours £35.

    You'll see availability change as you leave the browser window open as the mesh reacts.

    “I see you have been browsing this item for twenty minutes, there is now one on it's way to a location 1.2 miles away, add to basket”

    The intelligence is in the pre-requisitioning algorithms, like banks retailers will compete for the split second trend identification, your eye dwell signature will be quantified and you might just notice that same thing that caught your eye on the website there on the shelf when you go to pick up a previous delivery.

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  7. NoneSuch Silver badge

    Those drones will need cameras for proof of delivery so there is a whole bag of worms opened by them recording aerial video in residential neighbourhoods.

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    1. RISC OS
      Reply Icon

      I can't see this being useful for consumers

      but business maybe... most people don't live in their own mansion with a garden with space free to act as a helipad... like in the films on the net about this.

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      1. Suricou Raven
        Reply Icon

        Re: I can't see this being useful for consumers

        I can imagine something of a niche in medicine. There are certain very rare fluids which hospitals rarely need, but if they do need must be available immediately. Antivenoms, for one. So incorporate drones into stock management. A patient comes into A&E with a snake bite, doctors identify the snake as the rare pin-striped bugle-snake, but they have no antivenom - so the stock system determines that another hospital nearby has some. Thirty minutes away by car, but five minutes as the drone flies.

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Whalesong-driven drivel

    Ha! It's scathing attacks like this on corporate psycho-babble that keep me coming back to el reg. Thanks Lester.

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  9. Robin Bradshaw

    Beaten to market

    Amazon should speak to the cunning Lithuanian smugglers that beat them to market :)

    http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/russians-capture-cigarette-smuggling-drone/

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