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Unfortunately the title is very clickbaity, but I didn’t want to edit it. Here is the full title:

Amazon is gutting its voice-assistant Alexa. Employees describe a division in crisis and huge losses on 'a wasted opportunity.'

Maybe we are talking about different things, but you can definitely pre-fill your tax form with employer and social security data in Germany. In that case, you only have to add information if you want to claim deductions higher than the "Werbungskostenpauschale".

Things usually only get difficult when you are self-employed or have difficult deductions.

Actually there is. There is a certain chance that you're unhappy with your fridge and you'll return it. So the assumption is that you are more likely to buy a different fridge than any other item. That's why they show you other fridges.

They don’t need verification. In theory, you are supposed to have a direct debit mandate, but that is basically just a click.

If you want to take out a direct debit you need to be registered though, the process isn’t trivial and you need to deposit a security that can be used for a dispute. That makes it rather unlikely that the system is abused - though not impossible.

Two options:

1) Free apps with advertisements. Paid apps are by far the minority.

2) I guess this statement is related to subscription models like spotify. If you acquire the user outside of the apple ecosystem and they subscribe on your own website and then download your free app from the app store, you get to keep 100% on the revenue that the user generates as well.

Yes, thanks, I've clarified this.

That’s not the experience I have with AWS. They are really trying to help you get the most out of their platform - including costs.

I’m not saying their pricing is not confusing, but the account managers and sales engineers I’ve worked with always did a good job navigating us through it - and being honest when something can be achieved a lot cheaper.

Better have a customer optimize their usage, pay less, be happy, and stick with AWS than switching to a different platform.

This is along the lines of "Ha, taking half the day off, are we?" when somebody leaves a little bit earlier than usual. It sounds like (just) a bad joke, but it has severe consequences for your working relationship.

I get that it's tempting to make jokes when you start managing for your old team members. Just accept the fact that you've switched positions and that your relationship will change. It will only make it more awkward if you don't.

I believe the reply was focussed towards the gig economy and the use of venture capital to scale aggressively.

I agree with a lot of points op is making, but when it comes to e.g. the gig economy and using vc funds to scale b2c businesses by undercutting competitors, I'm very happy that we have a different situation in Germany.

Actually you can. A few years ago, when paying with a German bank card, very often the transaction was turned into a direct debit transaction, because they used to be cheaper.

This used to be very common in supermarkets. Every time you had to sign the receipt this was happening. It's not as common nowadays as the fees are now more or less the same.