I never hear the phrase "doubling down" used to mean "doubling", except maybe in the original usage in gambling. But colloquially it just means "increasing focus on". In that use there is no inherent contradiction in downsizing + attempting to increasing focus. In fact that seems to be what almost all companies who downsize are attempting to do.
Edit: In fact come to think of it, even in blackjack when you double down, it's as much about committing as it is the doubling of the bet. You have to take one and only one card and that ends your turn, so you're turning down all other options to do this one thing, and in exchange for taking that risky move you get to double your bet.
doubling down is not about increasing focus. It is about increasing risk by making a BIGGER (not smaller) bet on something.
This is in the original meaning in gambling (you are convinced you are right and so double your bet) and elsewhere.
Only in PR land is a cash flow pullback and risk reduction step such as a headcount reduction called a doubling down. It goes to show how pernicious these types of intentional miswordings are.
Amazon launched Fire Phone and Alexa months apart. They shit-canned the phone and doubled down on Alexa. It’s not just PR speak.
Many of the phone people either left the company or went to work on Alexa. They also did a massive inventory write down for the phone in their quarterly report.
It seems to me like you are agreeing with the parent. Amazon increased their risk by closing the phone side and increasing the resources allocated to Alexa and hence the double down.
The blackjack move is in fact a FOCUS of your attention, which potentially increases risk (but in fact if it increased your risk you wouldn't make that move -- you pick the focus based on expected value).
And it's pretty rare (if ever) that someone says "I'm doubling down on X" and they mean to say "I'm going to double the size of my bet across all my activities." Pretty much the opposite.
Doubling down on the tech, no matter what that means quantitatively, would mean qualitatively increasing your bet on the actual product. E.g. you’d fire every last milin if that meant you could keep a LiDAR engineer on staff.
Edit: In fact come to think of it, even in blackjack when you double down, it's as much about committing as it is the doubling of the bet. You have to take one and only one card and that ends your turn, so you're turning down all other options to do this one thing, and in exchange for taking that risky move you get to double your bet.