Right now, amazon is packed full of L6 and L7 software managers, making 450-900k a year, that:
1. dont understand ai
2. have had the same skill set for 10 years
3. are working on autopilot, not trying to get promoted, just collecting paychecks
4. taking zero risk, follow protocol, play politics
for the company to move forwards, they need a massive purge. 15k is childs play. too many employees that make too much money to just maintain status quo
Isn’t that the job? I’m not even sure what “understand AI” even means, from where I sit, it maybe means “add AI to everything” and that doesn’t seem that complicated.
I’m not here to defend the people in Amazon corporate, I’m just not convinced it’s okay for a big rich corporation to hire all these people and then fire them on a whim. It’s not like Amazon can’t afford it.
Exactly. This is why it makes absolutely zero sense to join Amazon right now as they are the worst ones to join [0] (Unless you specialize in robotics or actual AI and not controlling 'Agents')
They are aiming to layoff 30k employees this year. They are one bad earnings away from a surprise mass layoff unfortunately.
> but the time to organize was back when we still had the upper hand
This is learned helplessness. It's not going to get better for software engineers anytime soon, I'm afraid.
The time to organize is like planting a tree: the best time is 20 years ago, and the second best time is now. Especially if you're an early-career SWE, you seem to have little to lose anyhow.
Not sure about other countries, but there were a few trys in creating unions for software engineers in Brazil, where I live. They all failed for lack of interest from the engineers themselves.
Aside from that, you need to contribute with money for something that will not get you anything in the short term. Also the lack of transparency incentives corruption
Unions are only going to be effective in a domain where the job can’t be done just as well by someone on the other side of the planet. Think plumbers, electricians, etc. The fact that the work has to be done “here and now” is the leverage those workers have.
A software engineer’s union would just kick whatever offshoring is happening into overdrive.
If there was a union in place, the massive over hiring that led to this wouldn't have happened and the competent developers would have made less money. So how exactly does everyone come out ahead there?
This is a boom and bust industry by nature. Projects finish or cancel, and work winds down. You can always be laid off. Seven years of plenty, seven years of famine.
There's some stuff that, culturally, I don't think Amazon will ever do well. Amazon Games should be shuttered entirely. Their latest game was a really embarrassing flop; "King of Meat", which they expected to have 100,000 daily concurrent players, reached a max of 320 concurrents during a free weekend[0]. Have you heard of a single Amazon Prime Original Movie[1]? Likely only one -- 2025's War of the Worlds, which became a meme because it is legitimately one of the worst movies of all time.
Amazon is built on a culture of doing the most boring, data-driven, predictable thing possible and executing well. Which is awesome when you're dealing with databases and the logistics of delivering packages. But it's effectively the opposite of games, movies and other creative media where you have to trust a single person or small group of people with a vision. Otherwise you get what Amazon gives, which is unappetizing slop.
If I were Jassy I'd cut off these product lines entirely. It's just not a good fit for how Amazon operates.
That list of movies is just the movies that Amazon Studios has been the distributor for via Prime Video. Amazon didn’t necessarily produce or fund all of the movies in that list. It’s a bunch of cheap movies that are likely meant to be loss leaders for Prime Video subscriptions, which is something that very much does fit the style of Amazon. Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV all have a similar list of D-tier garbage just to fill their catalogs.
On the contrary to your points, Amazon has put out some pretty solid and well received original series. The Boys, Gen V, Fallout, Reacher, Mr and Mrs Smith, Invincible, have all done really well if not been hits.
Games is pretty trash though. I think they’re also going for a loss leader strategy there, but the platform they’re trying to promote (Luna) just isn’t there.
"Amazon is built on a culture of doing the most boring, data-driven, predictable thing possible and executing well."
Quite.
I remember when they started off flogging books in the '90s. I completely agree with you that trying to do "creative" is a bloody daft idea for a bunch of very efficient box shifters.
That's because the people running these companies learned the hard way not to write their collusion down, so now they just all totally coincidentally act in the same way that ends up driving wages down and keeping workers afraid and in line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
> Amazon has about 350,000 corporate employees and a total workforce of approximately 1.56 million.
Is it mentioned anywhere that the roles eliminated are all going to be software engineers, because that’s what all the threads so far are interpreting this as. This feels more like preparing for a recession without saying it out loud. People aren’t buying as much anymore and with focus on cost savings across tech, can easily understand AWS not covering for lower retail revenue anymore.
> Under Prime Minister Modi's leadership, India has successfully built digital infrastructure that connects businesses to customers, small towns to global markets, and traditional enterprises to modern technology.
You're making a common mistake. WARN is for the _previous_ layoff. The way they execute these, they bump out your effective last day such that there is no WARN notice till after it's already announced.
> Employee separations resulting from this action are expected to be permanent. The affected employees are not represented by a union or any other collective bargaining representative.
The only AWS service I still use is SES, for sending emails from client applications. Surely that can be self hosted? Can anyone reccommend a competitor?
Turns out announcing a $100k fee to distract from the Trump Gold Card announcement during the same press conference [3] leads to a reverse brain drain [0] and a $35B commitment to invest in India [1].
For example, much of AWS SageMaker's team is out of AWS India, and unofficially Amazonians on work visas are being offered transfers to India [2] while paying L6/7 [4] roughly the same as they would in Germany [5].
I warned people on HN for years to not be greedy with remote work (1-2 day hybrid is not the end of the world) and not be pissy to Americans of non-European heritage and derogatorily calling us H1Bs.
Either way those of us who know how to take advantage of brutal raw capitalism win - especially as this administration is helping further enhance this offshoring [6] with technology transfers [7].
An AI bubble pop is going to create depression if this sort of thinking continues. Fire bright people to spend money on questuonable quality AI. If others follow we are saying "all in" and shoving the poker chips on more model improvements.
mikert89|1 month ago
1. dont understand ai
2. have had the same skill set for 10 years
3. are working on autopilot, not trying to get promoted, just collecting paychecks
4. taking zero risk, follow protocol, play politics
for the company to move forwards, they need a massive purge. 15k is childs play. too many employees that make too much money to just maintain status quo
cmiles74|1 month ago
I’m not here to defend the people in Amazon corporate, I’m just not convinced it’s okay for a big rich corporation to hire all these people and then fire them on a whim. It’s not like Amazon can’t afford it.
Lammy|1 month ago
rvz|1 month ago
They are aiming to layoff 30k employees this year. They are one bad earnings away from a surprise mass layoff unfortunately.
The other big tech companies are at lesser risk.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46741246
artyom|1 month ago
2. yes, if you're talking about basic reading skills at best.
3. correct. except "autopilot" doesn't even mean solving the basic problems they're supposed to solve as part of the role.
4. which is exactly what Amazon asked them to do.
> for the company to move forwards, they need a massive purge.
Absolutely. Starting at the C-suite, VP, and director levels (L8 and above).
Source: I was there.
evantbyrne|1 month ago
jahnu|1 month ago
Der_Einzige|1 month ago
int_19h|1 month ago
(but the time to organize was back when we still had the upper hand)
futuraperdita|1 month ago
This is learned helplessness. It's not going to get better for software engineers anytime soon, I'm afraid.
The time to organize is like planting a tree: the best time is 20 years ago, and the second best time is now. Especially if you're an early-career SWE, you seem to have little to lose anyhow.
augusto-moura|1 month ago
Aside from that, you need to contribute with money for something that will not get you anything in the short term. Also the lack of transparency incentives corruption
xienze|1 month ago
A software engineer’s union would just kick whatever offshoring is happening into overdrive.
bpt3|1 month ago
unknown|1 month ago
[deleted]
jonehiskey1|1 month ago
beanjuiceII|1 month ago
4er_transform|1 month ago
[deleted]
groundzeros2015|1 month ago
This is a boom and bust industry by nature. Projects finish or cancel, and work winds down. You can always be laid off. Seven years of plenty, seven years of famine.
mjr00|1 month ago
Amazon is built on a culture of doing the most boring, data-driven, predictable thing possible and executing well. Which is awesome when you're dealing with databases and the logistics of delivering packages. But it's effectively the opposite of games, movies and other creative media where you have to trust a single person or small group of people with a vision. Otherwise you get what Amazon gives, which is unappetizing slop.
If I were Jassy I'd cut off these product lines entirely. It's just not a good fit for how Amazon operates.
[0] https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/king-of-meat-studio-...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amazon_Prime_Video_ori...
cobolcomesback|1 month ago
On the contrary to your points, Amazon has put out some pretty solid and well received original series. The Boys, Gen V, Fallout, Reacher, Mr and Mrs Smith, Invincible, have all done really well if not been hits.
Games is pretty trash though. I think they’re also going for a loss leader strategy there, but the platform they’re trying to promote (Luna) just isn’t there.
gerdesj|1 month ago
Quite.
I remember when they started off flogging books in the '90s. I completely agree with you that trying to do "creative" is a bloody daft idea for a bunch of very efficient box shifters.
tayo42|1 month ago
loeg|1 month ago
Lammy|1 month ago
That's because the people running these companies learned the hard way not to write their collusion down, so now they just all totally coincidentally act in the same way that ends up driving wages down and keeping workers afraid and in line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
darth_avocado|1 month ago
Is it mentioned anywhere that the roles eliminated are all going to be software engineers, because that’s what all the threads so far are interpreting this as. This feels more like preparing for a recession without saying it out loud. People aren’t buying as much anymore and with focus on cost savings across tech, can easily understand AWS not covering for lower retail revenue anymore.
malfist|1 month ago
refulgentis|1 month ago
elcritch|1 month ago
For the last few months I still randomly get errors opening audible. You know, to buy more books.
cute_boi|1 month ago
alephnerd|1 month ago
and
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46746543
pvtmert|1 month ago
I smell corruption in this sentence
jonehiskey1|1 month ago
narmiouh|1 month ago
otterley|1 month ago
kungfulkoder|1 month ago
loeg|1 month ago
The Meta layoff is 100% Reality Labs (they published team names, in addition to locations and roles).
Edit: parent comment removed the link, but it was https://esd.wa.gov/employer-requirements/layoffs-and-employe... .
abnercoimbre|1 month ago
> Employee separations resulting from this action are expected to be permanent. The affected employees are not represented by a union or any other collective bargaining representative.
elseweather|1 month ago
forgetbook|1 month ago
jfil|1 month ago
mickle00|1 month ago
alephnerd|1 month ago
Turns out announcing a $100k fee to distract from the Trump Gold Card announcement during the same press conference [3] leads to a reverse brain drain [0] and a $35B commitment to invest in India [1].
For example, much of AWS SageMaker's team is out of AWS India, and unofficially Amazonians on work visas are being offered transfers to India [2] while paying L6/7 [4] roughly the same as they would in Germany [5].
I warned people on HN for years to not be greedy with remote work (1-2 day hybrid is not the end of the world) and not be pissy to Americans of non-European heritage and derogatorily calling us H1Bs.
Either way those of us who know how to take advantage of brutal raw capitalism win - especially as this administration is helping further enhance this offshoring [6] with technology transfers [7].
[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-23/us-loses-...
[1] - https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-35-bill...
[2] - https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonemployees/comments/1qfesvs/6_...
[3] - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-signs-proclamati...
[4] - https://www.levels.fyi/companies/amazon/salaries/software-en...
[5] - https://www.levels.fyi/companies/amazon/salaries/software-en...
[6] - https://youtube.com/watch?v=uDtm-k6JvI8
[7] - https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2025/04/the-india-us-tru...
hahahahhaah|1 month ago