Andrew Jassy tells white collar workers that such technology means fewer people will be needed for some jobs

As we roll out more generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done

we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce

Are we done for?

  • criss_cross@lemmy.worldEnglish
    602·
    2 days ago

    No. Amazon has been trying to cut head count for years now. They were hoping RTO5 would do the trick but because every company is trying to do the same thing people didn’t have a ship to jump to.

    “Our AI is so great!” Is a way to mask that their finances aren’t good and they dramatically made the wrong bet in 2021 hiring so much.

    Honestly most of the time at Amazon you’re doing more meetings and red tape than you are coding so I don’t expect AI to magically fix shit for them.

    • Zenith@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      8 hours ago

      They’re actually significantly below their current hiring target at the executive level and people are leaving left and right.

      • criss_cross@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        4 hours ago

        When I was last there a while ago people were leaving but they were hoping for a lot more of an exodus. Particularly in the L6/7 level.

        Has that changed?

        • pinball_wizard@lemmy.zipEnglish
          3·
          3 hours ago

          but they were hoping for a lot more of an exodus. Particularly in the L6/7 level.

          Higher is more senior right? Counting up from L1?

          If so, that’s an insane amount of ego, to want less of that talent. Wow.

          But I bet the drugs they do are amazing, though.

          • criss_cross@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            43 minutes ago

            It’s a bit misleading for engineering.

            Every Engineer starts at L4. That’s the junior position.

            L5 is the mid-senior level. Most SDEs in Amazon are L5 and that’s considered a terminal position. For management this is the “junior” (for lack of a better term) tier

            L6 is Senior but it’s closer to staff engineers at other companies. You tend to do more cross team work. This is also where a glut of managers are at

            L7 is Principal engineer and senior manager. Only about 2% of engineers get here. Managers at this lever oversee multiple teams.

            L8+ is fancy external hires and directors.

            The problem is that Amazon expects a lot of people to churn out before you hit the L6/7 levels. They dangle a carrot of super high pay for those tiers but don’t actually expect to pay it long term. There’s quite a few that have stayed longer than expected. And it’s hard to get out because they know how to game the system to demonstrate “impact”. Now that isn’t to say there aren’t a lot of good managers and engineers at this tier either. There are really good people at this tier. It’s just Amazon doesn’t want that many at this tier for long.

            Also if the idea of having an expected churn and dangling pay that no one can hit sounds dystopian and awful it is. Amazon sucks.

    • flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      181·
      2 days ago

      Their shopping experience is so much worse than only 3 years ago. Whatever they are doing, they are doing it wrong.