{"id":307739,"date":"2026-03-01T08:56:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T08:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/307739\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T08:56:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T08:56:07","slug":"survivors-guilt-overwork-and-ai-inside-amazons-mass-lay-offs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/307739\/","title":{"rendered":"Survivor\u2019s guilt, overwork and AI: inside Amazon\u2019s mass lay-offs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amazon\u2019s HR chief last month sought to damp concern among employees that mass lay-offs were now the norm. Cuts of more than 30,000 workers since October were not the \u201cbeginning of a new rhythm\u201d, insisted Beth Galetti. \u201cThat\u2019s not our plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

The world\u2019s largest company by revenue has enacted rounds of job cuts since chief executive Andy Jassy took charge in 2021 after a period of rapid expansion in the pandemic. The company\u2019s leadership says the latest cull serves a strategic aim: to make Amazon operate \u201clike the world\u2019s largest start-up\u201d, ready to innovate using AI and by running \u201cwith fewer layers and more ownership\u201d.<\/p>\n

Yet for survivors left to work another day, the mood has felt increasingly sombre. \u201cDay to day it just feels untenable. Our workload is increasing and the number of [problems] to deal with is just piling up,\u201d said one longstanding employee. \u201cSome managers know this is the case, but executives just keep pointing to some bigger AI picture.\u201d <\/p>\n

As Amazon pushes to increase productivity and reduce headcount, pressure on the $2.2tn group\u2019s workforce is growing. For competitors in tech and other sectors grappling with what may be the most consequential technological shift since the advent of the internet, the resulting tensions could be a warning of things to come. <\/p>\n

Faced with aggressive competition from start-ups such as OpenAI and Anthropic, Amazon and other large tech companies are investing billions to develop AI and the data centre infrastructure it relies on. As executives weigh those investments with the realities of operating a profitable group, analysts expect job cuts and divestments will form part of a playbook for all large tech groups this year. <\/p>\n

Jason Wong, an analyst at Gartner, said lay-offs were part of a strategy to free up capital to invest in technologies that promise potentially outsized returns. \u201cExecutives are asking: \u2018How much money can we save to reallocate [into AI investments]?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But for leaner workforces set steeper targets, while employers plough cash into AI tools that might replace them, the result can be demoralisation and depletion. More than a dozen current and former Amazon employees spanning core ad, cloud and retail units said staff morale had slumped. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s just been a shift to being lean and profitable,\u201d said one senior AWS employee. \u201cYou\u2019re being asked to achieve the same goals with a third of the people [in the team].\u201d<\/p>\n

Some workers said successive redundancies had affected morale and many experienced \u201csurvivor\u2019s guilt\u201d. Despite Jassy saying cuts would focus on \u201clayers\u201d of management that slowed down decision-making, some staff said Amazon had fired recent hires and \u201ccritically placed\u201d senior managers.<\/p>\n

Multiple Amazon engineers said their units now had to deal with a higher number of \u201cSev2s\u201d \u2014 incidents requiring a rapid response to avoid product outages \u2014 each day as a result of cuts. Amazon disputed the claim that headcount cuts were responsible.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are people on my team who aren\u2019t happy that we\u2019re having to deal with this stuff,\u201d said one Amazon engineer, adding the company was increasingly relying on sub-optimal solutions that create more problems. \u201cFrom a product perspective, you\u2019re just having to cut features and maintain technical debt,\u201d they added, referring to increased costs or vulnerabilities that arise when technical fixes are integrated without proper planning. <\/p>\n

Amazon has built and deployed several AI tools for staff, including its Kiro developer platform and Q chatbot. The company expects more than 80 per cent of developers to use AI tools at least once a week. It monitors employees\u2019 AI adoption on an internal dashboard called Clarity, according to two people familiar with the matter. <\/p>\n

However, multiple employees said such tools were not effective for complex tasks, although they had helped with ideation and early prototyping. \u201cI\u2019ve seen no evidence that AI is doing anyone\u2019s job to the extent that we can lay someone off,\u201d said one AWS engineer. \u201cThe only thing I\u2019ve seen is people picking up the slack.\u201d <\/p>\n

Several employees pointed to one instance where they said the use of Kiro was partly responsible for a 13-hour service outage<\/a> in December, after engineers allowed the AI tool to make changes and it opted to \u201cdelete and recreate the environment\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s unproven technology. Some experimentation is tolerable but the degree to which executives are enforcing its use is just out of step with reality,\u201d said one senior AWS employee. Amazon said the involvement of AI in the December outage was a \u201ccoincidence\u201d.<\/p>\n

In a letter last year, Jassy told employees the group was benefiting from using generative AI, and that a further rollout of agents \u201cshould change the way our work is done\u201d. Though it was hard to predict exactly how this would look, \u201cin the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce\u201d, he wrote.<\/p>\n

Amazon has told managers to incorporate projected AI efficiencies into headcount planning for the year, according to two people familiar with the matter. <\/p>\n

\"AAmazon\u2019s headquarters in Seattle. Amazon is one of the few large tech groups to mandate a five-day return to office for corporate employees \u00a9 David Ryder\/Bloomberg<\/p>\n

This has led to pushback, including an open letter<\/a> signed anonymously by current and former staff members, which argued the company was investing in a future where it would be easier to discard employees.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere\u2019s what we\u2019re actually experiencing: higher expected output and shorter timelines, mandates to build AI tools for wasteful use cases, and massive investment in AI with little investment in career advancement,\u201d the letter, published last November, said. <\/p>\n

\u201cAs soon as AI got introduced, deadlines started shortening, and people were expected to do more as quickly,\u201d said one signatory who was made redundant last year. \u201cIt was heavily implied we would be graded on use.\u201d <\/p>\n

Multiple current AWS software developers said they were being asked to take on new roles with the assistance of AI tools. They noted technical writing teams had been laid off, with engineers now required to complete these tasks. AI use had also been formally written into some workers\u2019 promotion criteria, the developers said.<\/p>\n

Amazon said it expected employees to \u201cuse resources \u2014 including AI \u2014 to make work more engaging, to build products that help our teams become more effective and to improve customers\u2019 lives\u201d. It said \u201cunderstanding\u201d how employees adopted new technology helped the company support them and share \u201coperational efficiency gains\u201d during review processes and throughout the year.<\/p>\n

Anton Korinek, director of the University of Virginia\u2019s Economics of Transformative AI initiative, said workers were justified in concerns that tools would create \u201cnew competitive pressures\u201d and make some roles redundant. \u201cIn the medium term, I expect that AI will lead to very strong productivity gains in many white-collar professions, and that these will eventually be reflected in lower job numbers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The threat of AI-driven job losses in a tighter labour market has already tipped the balance of power from staff to employers, with many workplaces hardening expectations. Amazon is one of the few large tech groups to mandate a five-day return to office for corporate employees and measures attendance with badge scanners. <\/p>\n

Executives say this approach is to help staff work cohesively in a period of intensified competition. But some analysts are sceptical Amazon \u2014 an employer of more than 1.5mn, roughly a fifth in corporate roles \u2014 can operate as a lean start-up.<\/p>\n

\u201cA start-up is based on huge amounts of cohesion and commitment,\u201d said Anna Tavis, a New York University professor and former HR executive. \u201cThere\u2019s no way you can generate this level of performance if your actions [through lay-offs] say otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Amazon is committed to this approach. Galetti\u2019s January memo to employees said the \u201cworld is changing quickly\u201d due to AI and this would force the group to be more innovative. <\/p>\n

She did not rule out further cuts. \u201cWe\u2019re convinced that we need to be organised more leanly.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amazon\u2019s HR chief last month sought to damp concern among employees that mass lay-offs were now the norm.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,111,139,69,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-307739","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}