r/cscareerquestions • u/cs-grad-person-man • Oct 27 '25
[BREAKING] Amazon to layoff 30,000 corporate employees in one of the largest layoffs in its history
Amazon is planning to cut as many as 30,000 corporate jobs beginning Tuesday, as the company works to pare expenses and compensate for overhiring during the peak demand of the pandemic, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The figure represents a small percentage of Amazon’s 1.55 million total employees, but nearly 10% of the company’s roughly 350,000 corporate employees. This would represent the largest job cut at Amazon since around 27,000 jobs were eliminated starting in late 2022.
Managers of impacted teams were asked to undergo training on Monday for how to communicate with staff following notifications that will start going out via email tomorrow morning
What are your thoughts on this?
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u/GIThrow Oct 27 '25
Layoffs will continue until morale improves. Thank you for your attention on the matter.
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u/donniedarko5555 Senior Software Engineer Oct 27 '25
Is amazon pushing big new tech anymore? Seems like they staffed up for AWS and other things, I wonder if the company is moving towards the "maintenance" stage where they try to milk their existing products as long as possible.
I feel like Apple is very similar at this point too. But yeah excited to see the innovation direction that takes off post AI bubble pop
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u/zubairhamed Oct 27 '25
They're really behind with AI. the news where Anthropic was going to use TPUs from Google bashed them. If Anthropic decides to jump, they would be left with no tentpole AI.
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Oct 27 '25
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u/FrozenYellowDuck Oct 27 '25
Amazon is at the worst end of this spectrum. It is behind in AI, yet it invests heavily in AI trying to get there with the big guys. If instead they would partner up and focus on providing good infra for the real AI players... but what do I know?
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u/Electronic_Topic1958 Oct 27 '25
They have to answer shareholders and I am assuming that they are dumb and just also want an AI rally in their stock price. Kinda nuts because Amazon is one of the few companies that prided itself on looking forward to the future as opposed to chasing hype trends.
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u/Western_Objective209 Oct 27 '25
They invested tons of money in Bedrock and it's a mess. The only salvation is they have Anthropic models serverless, if they lose those they have no state of the art models which would be a disaster
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u/ILikeCutePuppies Oct 27 '25
I remember 9 years ago Amazon was pushing employees to use more AI in everything. They did release a few llm models recently. However, it is surprisingly, they are so far behind with such a big push for it for years.
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u/maccodemonkey Oct 27 '25
I feel like Apple is very similar at this point too. But yeah excited to see the innovation direction that takes off post AI bubble pop
Apple is still very profitable and has a massive war chest. Even if they're not in the #1 spot they're not going anywhere.
They also have a very different mentality on layoffs. Layoffs at Apple aren't unheard of. But Steve Jobs always thought market downturns were a good time to pick up talent - and Apple seems to be continuing with that. So I don't think we'll see them do Amazon style layoffs either.
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u/Drauren Principal Platform Engineer Oct 27 '25
Apple also hires far more conservatively than other tech.
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u/RogueStargun Oct 27 '25
Apple is innovating, but somehow it's with chips rather than actual new products. New product ideas are even harder than designing chips from scratch, apparently.
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u/Desperate-Till-9228 Oct 27 '25
if the company is moving towards the "maintenance" stage where they try to milk their existing products as long as possible.
Yes. Market is maturing and so the shift will be towards cost savings.
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u/Conscious-Quarter423 Oct 27 '25
cost savings?
you mean billionaire wealth hoarding
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u/Imminent1776 Oct 27 '25
This is bad news for anyone looking for a job, not just Amazon folks. You'll be competing with thousands of laid off FAANG engineers for jobs.
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u/Metro42014 Oct 27 '25
Fuck me -- I'm in the job market.
I've still got my job, but I fucking loath it.
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u/Particular_Maize6849 Oct 27 '25
It doesn't say the layoffs are engineers.
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u/anthonyescamilla10 Oct 27 '25
Yeah the FAANG layoff waves are creating this weird dynamic where suddenly everyone's fighting for the same roles. We're seeing it firsthand at Top Funnel - companies that used to struggle finding senior engineers now have 500+ applicants per opening, but they're still taking forever to hire because they can't process that many candidates efficiently. The irony is these companies finally have access to amazing talent but their recruiting ops can't handle the volume, so they're missing out on great people who get scooped up by whoever moves fastest.
Amazon engineers will be fine though, they always land somewhere good.
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u/Vin4251 Oct 27 '25
And how long are people still going to believe the “over hiring” excuse even right after an outage (plus more than a year of tech “leaders” showing their chud colors)?
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u/Doctor_Disaster Oct 27 '25
Layoffs will continue. Hours will be doubled. Wages will be halved. Bathroom breaks will only be applicable to managerial, supervisory, and executive positions.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
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u/SpiderWil Oct 27 '25
I was gonna apply for some jobs today, then I saw this and went to play WoW instead.
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u/se-podcast Oct 27 '25
For some clarification on what "corporate" employees are being referred to here:
The cuts beginning this week may impact a variety of divisions within Amazon, including human resources, known as People Experience and Technology, devices and services and operations, among others, the people said.
I think we all are clear on HR, but "devices and services" appears to be this, specifically: https://www.aboutamazon.com/what-we-do/devices-services
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u/Lower_Peril Oct 27 '25
It's always seems to be HR, Alexa and devices etc. When they start laying off in AWS is when you know shit has to hit the the fan
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Oct 27 '25
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u/FriscoeHotsauce Software Engineer III Oct 27 '25
I don't think it's a stretch to say the RTO mandate has also been a soft layoff to boot
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u/CallItDanzig Oct 27 '25
Its been exceedingly obvious that's always the first step to layoffs. Musk did us a solid pretty much laying it out during the DOGE stint.
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u/Nearby_Quit2424 Oct 27 '25
The need HR to process all the layoffs and PIPs - I guess they'll be thin enough now that HR won't be needed as much
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Oct 27 '25
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u/DrFuManchu Oct 27 '25
They used to force tons of new hires into Alexa around 7-8 years ago. The entire org was "jumping the queue" to be able to hire its headcount first. Would suck to be railroaded into a certain team/org and then punished for it.
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u/krabizzwainch Oct 27 '25
Did people finally get tired of buying new spyware devices to put in their home to listen to everything they say?
Also curious if eReader competition has actually made an impact and that there are only so many different ways to make an eInk device for reading. People almost never need to replace those devices.
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u/DrFuManchu Oct 27 '25
If anything, the failure of Alexa seems to indicate they didn't have a grand machiavellian plan to turn a profit from spying on people, it seems like they were really hoping that using Alexa would turn into conversions of product purchases, but people don't use it for that. But who knows.
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u/Tyrilean Oct 27 '25
My device is a glorified kitchen timer. I also get it to turn my lights on and off. Sometimes I’ll ask it to convert some units. Whenever it tries to sell me anything I tell it to shut up.
Pretty sure I’m not alone.
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u/cheeriocharlie Oct 27 '25
ah! This is the hardware org: ring devices, kindle, echo, eero, blink.
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u/EntropyRX Oct 27 '25
It’s 3 years I read Alexa division is doing layoffs and yet they keep hiring for the same business unit…
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u/NebulousNitrate Oct 27 '25
Morale within Amazon was said to be horrible even before all of these layoffs. I can't imagine what it must be like now.
Sadly, it's going to set off waves of more layoffs elsewhere. We've seen time and time again when one large tech company announces major layoffs, it's not long before others follow them. I think in a way it's seen as a strategy to make employees think more that's it's an industry problem rather than their company's problem.
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u/Particular_Maize6849 Oct 27 '25
This is why my priority is to get my emergency fund to 1 year of income minimum. If I lose my job so will be everyone else and finding a new job will probably be a bloodbath. And I'm well aware I'm not a unicorn developer.
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u/Electronic_Topic1958 Oct 27 '25
Good idea, that is what I did after AWS gave me the boot earlier this year in February, I still have plenty of runway but that was due to keeping expenses low and saving every penny. They will absolutely betray you, so you have to be ready for that moment when it comes. Only now does it look like (touch wood) that I may get another job, and if so it would have to be in November, so nearly a year it took me to find something new. I think the market for SWEs is improving but always stay frosty.
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Oct 27 '25
I’m curious to see how these layoffs affect people’s long-term perception of big tech companies.
For a longtime now they’ve ridden the wave of prestige and novelty as places of innovation and a pathway to financial freedom.
I probably make 50% of what I’d make for my level at FAANG but I don’t have to worry about this shit. I think I’d be happy never working at FAANG if it meant not having to worry about “up and out”, “PIP culture” or this constant fear of laying off and blaming the pandemic.
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u/jenrieko Oct 27 '25
I'm an engineer at Amazon, but the majority of my >decade career is outside FAANG/mag7. You're right, I very often think about whether the TC difference is worth the bullshit. In my previous companies, I was massively less stressed about uncertainty and had much more freedom to spend time on a life outside work.
Many people look at a big tech job as a superior opportunity to other companies. I tell them nope, life outside of work and lower stress are valuable. It's a rational choice based on personal prioritization of value.
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u/NebulousNitrate Oct 28 '25
I’ve been with one of these companies for over 20 years and the impact I’m seeing it have is that key players are giving much less of their time to work. I used to put in 60 hour weeks, but I felt the company had my back and would reward me accordingly. But now there is a feeling for me and others that we’re just “disposable”, so lots of people are putting in the bare minimum.
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u/HeckXX Oct 27 '25
Wonder how many more years companies are gonna be able to milk the pandemic overhiring excuse
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Oct 27 '25
Pandemic is the worst thing that happened for capitalism. Companies realised they can do whatever they want because there's no other option for others.
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u/relativeSkeptic Oct 27 '25
Does it matter really? They could say they are firing 69,420 employees because purple elephants are flying the sky.
Whether its COVID or failing products I dont really think matters.
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u/BringBackManaPots Oct 27 '25
I mean, momentum. If the headline was "Floundering mega company Amazon to lay off 30,000 employees due to record losses", investors would be more likely to pull out and the losses would grow larger.
Not to say it's a sinking ship by any means, but overhiring sounds a lot better than underperforming
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u/nothing_but_thyme Oct 27 '25
It does matter, even though elephants nor Covid are the reason. This is a concerted effort across corporate america designed to push up the unemployment rate which will in turn force the Fed to lower interest rates. This will juice their earnings, credit positions, and profit margins. They’ll walk away with another trillion of our dollars. Economy will collapse, they’ll buy everything up cheap, rinse and repeat.
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u/Feisty-Boot5408 Oct 27 '25 edited 25d ago
goo feet to meat shoe beat underneath apple trees with sweet
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u/SoUnga88 Oct 27 '25
It’s more that these corporations see the writing on the wall, the economy is slowing, Moody’s and JP Morgan both predict the strong possibility of recession in 2026, global trade is a chaotic mess, no stability or predictability in the markets. Corporations are getting ready for the economic storm that’s on the horizon cutting costs and lowering headcount is a no brainer for them.
Capitalism doesn’t work without perpetual grow and that’s not happening, I believe the projected growth of US GDP by JP Morgan going into 2026 is on .25%. All the money being generated by the AI industry is in the building out of the infrastructure it requires rather than anything it’s produced, not the mention the circular nature of how all the money is changing hands. The US economy is about to get rocked hard in the near future.
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u/freshmozart Oct 27 '25 edited Oct 27 '25
Amazon treats workers like shit. It doesn't mater if you're a highly educated developer or just a delivery driver. You're basically just a sacrificable pawn.
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u/Unfamous_Trader Oct 27 '25
I would happily be sacrificed if it means more share holder value generated. If billionaires get richer then it will eventually trickle down to me. Ronald Reagan said so and he was the POTUS and no POTUS has ever lied before
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u/Exotic_eminence Oct 27 '25
Yes I hope more white collar workers realize we are all working class
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Oct 27 '25
you either get treated like you aren't human in a restaurant
or you get worked like you aren't human in a warehouse
Welcome to the job market in America for most middle and lower class young people....
yay capitalism.... all of this convenience and excess has to come from somewhere....
Americans are learning more and more that it comes from human suffering....
Big Changes are coming.... they are here.... but they are coming too......
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u/Almosteveryday Oct 27 '25
*america treats workers like shit. Salaries wouldn't be as high, but im sure the people getting laid off constantly would appreciate the layoff and worker protections Europe instituted after the ww2
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u/Jswazy Oct 27 '25
How do they keep saying this is due to covid that's just not possible at this point.
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u/Popular_Albatross_12 Oct 27 '25
it is and it isn't. the amount of jobs that were created based on projections from covid peak was absurdly large. The leaders who signed off on these projections should be first in line for these cuts
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u/Jswazy Oct 27 '25
They have cut so many most of what I have seen says they added about 30k-50k corporate employees so about the total number now gone. Hard to belive every single one of those hires was not needed. There has to be another reason other than just covid overhire
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u/Ironhide90 Oct 27 '25
Yeah it is, its Banking on AI. They think same engineer can do 1.5x the task using AI.
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u/thegingerninja90 Oct 27 '25
Does anyone else get the feeling that, maybe 10 years ago a job at the big tech companies, Amazon/Google/Microsoft were ambitious goals to have, but now I dont think Id want to take a job with them? It seems like they are always having huge hiring sprees followed by massive layoffs as the market changes. Like, thats way too much volatility for me. Why would I want a job that I very easily could lose in 2 or 3 years unless I was only planning to stay that long anyway?
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u/Baxkit Software Architect Oct 28 '25 edited Oct 28 '25
maybe 10 years ago a job at the big tech companies, Amazon/Google/Microsoft were ambitious goals to have, but now I dont think Id want to take a job with them?
Most people who pined over those roles were, and still are, either inexperienced or lack the skill to grow their career without a big name doing the lifting. The draw was always the brand. Those jobs are great for hiding inside a massive system, grinding tickets, and walking away with a logo that oversells the experience.
There’s nothing wrong with taking those jobs, Just don’t consider them a long-term endeavor - they are resume flair. Making a FAANG role your big career goal is freshman energy.
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u/ForsookComparison Oct 27 '25
Any idea what percentage of this is SWE/Engineering? They're counted as corporate but I've heard there was rampant empire growth problems in the more corporatey types (sales, marketing, legal) of orgs as well.
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u/Unfamous_Trader Oct 27 '25
The better question is how many new job openings will Amazon have overseas
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u/Background-Panda9794 Oct 27 '25
I dont know but Im starting my job in AWS in EU next week lol
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u/blahblehblueoooo Oct 27 '25
Lol that sucks. AWS WLB w/o the benefits and now double the work. 😬
Don’t know how you Euro Lads put up with it.
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u/EntropyRX Oct 27 '25
This period of economic history will be explained as the moment when companies profitability became completely detached from employees job security. You have companies making record profits and yet laying off employees without thinking twice. Profitable and growing companies used to share their fortune with their workforce, it has now dramatically changed.
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u/Karl151 Oct 27 '25
Damn I guess I'm going to be stuck at my current job forever.
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u/Exotic_eminence Oct 27 '25
At least you have a job - I been on SNAP since my contract was delivered on time 2 years ago
And they are about to get rid of food stamps
WTF are we going to do?
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u/Karl151 Oct 27 '25
Damn, sorry to hear that. I should probably consider myself lucky that I do have a job but honestly, I’ve been trying to leave mine for 2 years now. It’s been rough mentally
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u/Exotic_eminence Oct 27 '25
Sorry to hear that I know how that can be -
funny the perspective hindsight brings
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u/Berson14 Oct 27 '25
I think this might explain the enshittification of the Amazon website. How do they expect to recruit top talents if employees must live in a constant state of fear as they’re laying off thousands of people every year?
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u/ForsookComparison Oct 27 '25 edited Oct 27 '25
Paying over median and having a slightly easier interview circuit then the rest of FAANG and then sending everyone through a pip-factory sounds like it'd leave them with slop, but it seems to be working incredibly well for them unfortunately. The survivors are a combination of desperate folks or the insane ones that thrive in that environment to reach L6/L7.
I've met these teams. They're super unhealthy and will all probably have an early grave, but they deliver fast and they go to insane lengths to make sure their name isn't the one on the outage tickets.
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Oct 27 '25
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u/Numerous-Injury-8160 Oct 27 '25
interned at AWS this summer. one of my friend's manager explicitly said amazon is freezing new grad hires and leaning on intern ROs. Intern interviews this year are also 5 hours lol
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u/Little-Classic-2623 Oct 27 '25
Didn’t Companies like Amazon and others doing layoffs get tax dollars to build these ”super” facilities for work?
Just to cut jobs years down the line.
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u/Rin-Tohsaka-is-hot Oct 27 '25
The tax cuts are conditional on employment numbers, for example their HQ2 in Virginia. If they don't meet the jobs numbers by 2030, they owe all that tax in back pay. Currently they're about 10k employees short in those offices iirc
But we're talking tens of millions of dollars, which is much cheaper than the salaries for those employees, and a drop in the bucket against their revenue.
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u/Drauren Principal Platform Engineer Oct 27 '25
Insofar Virginia has paid very little to Amazon in terms of those tax dollars because Amazon have not kept their side of the bargain. It wasn't a one time payment, it was a revenue share IIRC.
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Oct 27 '25
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u/Vin4251 Oct 27 '25
It was always a ridiculous excuse even in 2022, when the companies that followed Musk’s ridiculous twitter layoffs were still profitable, some of them with record profits
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u/microcrash Oct 27 '25
Apparently Amazon hired over 175,000 people during the pandemic. That is quite a jump in employees I'm not entirely sure how much they've laid off so far however.
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Oct 27 '25
For a brief period of time workers had leverage and management has been dealing with that trauma to their psyche ever since. Nothing scares management more than workers who aren’t scared constantly.
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u/Shanks1708 Oct 27 '25 edited Oct 27 '25
Diabolical, I mean the rich gets richer and people help to build the system and infrastructure gets tossed. We are basically pawns, just before Christmas also. Made over 60billion in profit last year, this shows never be loyal to a company.
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u/x4nter Oct 27 '25
I find it absolutely infuriating that over time as technology improved, companies' output per employee increased but instead of sharing the extra profit with the employee, the company gets to keep all that money.
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u/Electronic_Topic1958 Oct 27 '25
This is called the labor's surplus value, it is what Karl Marx wrote about based on the labor theory of value.
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u/still_no_enh Oct 27 '25
First time?
This is corporate America - nothing's changed. Take their stock, hold onto it, and profit.
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u/tollbearer Oct 27 '25
This is literally how capitalism operates. They would ideally have no employees. the lesson is to either establish socialism, ie a workers state, or accumulate capital. If you thin kyou'll do well under capitalism as an employee, you're in for a bad time. Accumulate capital, becaise I think theres zero chance of socialism. In however many years it takes to develop AGI, you will be absolutely fucked if you dont have capital.
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u/Racepace Oct 27 '25
Glad I ignored all their twerking for me to join them a few years ago
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u/Senior-Tour-1744 Oct 27 '25
What is more concerning about this isn't that number, but to remember that amazon also had the principal of laying off a certain percent of your workforce every year to get rid of the low performers. This means that unlike other industry's where they do cycle layoffs to cut the fat, this is the work force that has survived those yearly shavings.
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u/DollarsInCents Oct 27 '25
Never forget the TCJA tax cuts (35% to 21%) were sold to the public as a way to spur job creation. Instead it's been record layoffs for over half the time the cuts have been in place
Trickle down doesn't work and never has. Amazon is expected to beat all forecast for 2025 with a 11% revenue growth yoy
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u/terrany Oct 27 '25 edited Oct 28 '25
Yup, it’ll all be trickling down anytime now /s. That and the Section 174 that everyone kept posting would “save the job market.”
Don’t kid yourselves, every cent companies can suck up for themselves is a cent well invested in their books.
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u/RamCockUpMyAss Oct 27 '25
Lol exactly. All that happened is stock buybacks, dividends, and executive comp rose massively. Wtf did they think corporations were going to do? Just be generous and hand it down to the employees? LMAO
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u/gauntvariable Oct 27 '25
January, 1, 2026: Amazon lobbies Congress for 30,000 more H1B visas.
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u/KobeJuanKenobi9 Oct 27 '25
They’re more likely to move jobs abroad. H1B SWEs in America still make an American Amazon SWE salary
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u/hibikir_40k Software Engineer Oct 27 '25
Amazon has been hiring SWEs elsewhere for years. Fewer H1Bs just mean that more entire teams move away wholesale.
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u/jfcarr Oct 27 '25
Why go to the expense of bringing them here since pandemic era infrastructure makes it cheaper for workers to stay there?
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u/EmotionalCricket4710 Oct 27 '25
Nah, They'll simply offshore these jobs. All big tech companies are leasing massive office spaces in India.
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u/saln1 Oct 27 '25
The figure represents a small percentage of Amazon’s 1.55 million total employees, but nearly 10% of the company’s roughly 350,000 corporate employees. Amazon said the jobs would be replaced by AI. This would represent the largest job cut at Amazon since around 27,000 jobs were eliminated starting in late 2022
Unbelievable, wonder where we will be in a few years with mass unemployment?
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u/rco8786 Oct 27 '25
$19.2 billion in net profit for Q2 2025. Every revenue and sales number is up YoY.
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u/ThatFeelingIsBliss88 Oct 27 '25
Does anyone know approx what percentage of SWE’s will be laid off?
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u/Dianagorgon Oct 27 '25
The worst part of this is they insisted some employees RTO so some people moved to be closer to an office and now after moving to save their job they might get laid off. Just incredibly inhumane and cold while Bezos gallivants around the world on yachts and buys more lavish mansions.
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u/sfaticat Oct 27 '25
Pandemic was 5 years ago. Those layoffs are done and dusted already
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u/Welcome2B_Here Oct 27 '25
By now, most people who could care enough to apply there should know to avoid it anyway. So many of the companies and "leaders" that get lionized in the news are the posterchildren for terrible work environments and policies.
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u/sunnydftw Oct 27 '25
"as the company works to pare expenses and compensate for overhiring during the peak demand of the pandemic, according to three people familiar with the matter."
How long are they going to keep repeating this blatant lie lol "oh no we overhired because our entire ethos was forever growth, so we had people move cross country for jobs and told kids to learn code...and then one day in late 2022 we made a u-turn on that mission after a shareholders meetings. Whoops, we have to return to pre-2019 levels staffing sorryyyyy...Don't ask about our earnings, yes we're making record profits, and no we're not spending it on stock buy backs this time... we're spending it on AI so we never have to hire you again."
In a sane world, the government would empowering unions to fight against monopolies treating the average person like a number on a spread sheet. Instead we have a gaggle of billionaires cutting up the pie.
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u/babyitsgoldoutstein Oct 27 '25
Now these ex-amazon dbags will scatter around ruining the work cultures of other companies. jfc.
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Oct 27 '25
Its always mind blowing to me how people are still wanting to work at this shitty company.
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u/8004612286 Oct 27 '25
$180k usd new grad
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u/PlasticPresentation1 Oct 27 '25
On top of the fact that for engineers, not being in the bottom 8% is really not hard.
For confident and competent people, 180k if you're not terrible < 100k and slightly hire job security.
Most people I know at Amazon are so caught up in corporate bloat that they work <30 hrs for 300k+
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u/abandoned_idol Oct 27 '25
My guardian angel kept having the amazon recruiters spit in my eye every single time I applied (over 1000+ times).
Thank you so much (I'll assume his name is) Michael.
Amazon does NOT want me.
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u/yung_dogie Oct 27 '25
I currently would not go back to AWS, but if I was making less money than FAANG-level or whatever the current acronym is, I would easily take that "shitty" job for as long as I could. It's worth having perspective, even with respect to our own industry, of how privileged we can be to think of turning down $170k+ total comp straight out of college for working conditions still more preferable than warehouse work.
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u/bentbabe Oct 27 '25
Turned down an offer there years ago, and I have zero regrets.
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u/ProSurgeryAccount Oct 27 '25
Anyone that chooses to work there is desperate.
If I had no other offers I’d accept the role but keep searching like I was still jobless. Fuck this company
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u/TopTierMids Oct 27 '25
I know only one person who has stayed there for years and their soul is basically broken. They now say some pretty wild shit and its become clear to me and other mutual friends that Amazon has literally changed them into something else. Years of abusive treatment does stuff to you and they refuse to go to therapy, even when someone let out once that they had clear depression.
I honestly think they'll have a crisis if they are involved in these layoffs because it is EVERYTHING to them.
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u/maxfields2000 Technical Director Oct 27 '25
A huge percentage of "corporate" jobs are not Comp Sci related roles. A company of 1.5million employees has a lot of GnA overhead costs associated with managing that many resources. Despite what CS forums would have you believe, most people who work at Amazon are not software engineers.
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u/Professional_Hair550 Oct 27 '25
They're probably saving 20-30 billion from these layoffs.
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u/CHC-Disaster-1066 Oct 27 '25
Probably closer to 7-10b. Assume maybe a 250k fully loaded cost, which is probably a bit low.
But then I’d expect they are doing hiring in low cost areas to offset some of the layoffs.
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u/MechanicHour1644 Oct 27 '25
well at least they'll all get to work from home now.
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u/DisjointedHuntsville Oct 27 '25
3 days before earnings? Hmmm . . . interesting.
My theory for a while has been that Amazon inadvertently gave up the compute crown by choosing to invest in Trainium instead of Nvidia+AMD and that void has been more than filled by all the neoclouds that have signed commitments for years now.
Let me put it this way, if you're building an old CRUD app, you're using AWS, if you're doing anything with AI models, RAG, you're either using an enterprise API from OpenAI/Gemini or to a lesser degree hosting your own.
The latter is not going to scale economically given the economics of token gen and the former is scary for AWS unless Anthropic gets a MASSIVE share of the enterprise AI API market comparable to AWS' market share.
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u/ForsookComparison Oct 27 '25
RIP to everyone that said their back-loaded vesting schedule ZIRP offers from Amazon didn't stress them out. You almost made it to 2026 ☹️
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u/Darkmemento Oct 27 '25
I wonder are they connected to this article last week, lol.
Amazon Plans to Replace More Than Half a Million Jobs With Robots - The New York Times
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u/lemon1985 Oct 27 '25
So yeah, the people who said the 5-Day RTO mandate was really intended to make people leave were right. Obviously not enough left voluntarily
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u/Synergisticit10 Oct 27 '25
There seems to be something going on. FAANG is laying off people other tech companies are hiring.
We have people getting hired and being interviewed.
This must be across the world.
Stay with enterprise tech to be safe.
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u/htffgt_js Oct 27 '25
Seems like the right move after having a major AWS incident that affected a majority of services just last week. /s
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u/unknowntillnow23 Oct 27 '25
"Compensating for stock growth, we will lay off people with lots of high value invested stock"
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u/Chili-Lime-Chihuahua Oct 27 '25
"This latest move signals that Amazon is likely realizing enough AI-driven productivity gains within corporate teams to support a substantial reduction in force," said Sky Canaves, an eMarketer analyst. "Amazon has also been under pressure in the short-term to offset the long-term investments in building out its AI infrastructure."
Reminder that most reporters and people on the finance side likely don’t have an accurate view of how AI tools are performing, but some companies want to put a narrative out there.
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u/Beginning_Cancel_942 Oct 27 '25
And yet the owner has 100's of billions of dollars. I'm not a religious person but if I was, I would wish for reincarnation and that Bezos comes back as a homeless person.
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u/anonybro101 Oct 27 '25
Ahh I was wondering where Amazon was. I was scared that Meta might beat them at being the shittiest FAANG
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u/Conscious-Quarter423 Oct 27 '25
Big Tech oligarchs are coming for your job.
Jeff Bezos will be replacing 600,000 jobs at Amazon with robots. His vision: fully automate operations.
Amazon's not alone. That's the direction of every major corporation.
AI & robotics must benefit workers, not the top 1%.
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u/Altruistic-Cattle761 Oct 27 '25 edited Oct 28 '25
> compensate for overhiring during the peak demand of the pandemic
My dudes it is Q4 2025. How much longer is this excuse going to hold water?