Fewer people, more work—and they still have to take the fall for AI! Exposing Amazon workers: 30,000 layoffs usher in soaring profits

Being a “Survivor” at Amazon is even more torturous than being laid off.

According to the Financial Times, in just a few months, this giant swiftly cut 30,000 employees. But the most suffocating part is that those who managed to keep their jobs suddenly realize: their former colleagues’ desks are empty, yet all the work has fallen on their shoulders.

On one side are extended working hours and overstrained bodies; on the other are AI overseers pushed upon them by management, constantly threatening to take away their jobs. In the cold office buildings, no one cares whether you can survive—only whether you can feed the machine before you fall.

The so-called “Ownership”

is endless chores

“Every day, work is operating at overcapacity, with a mountain of mess to handle,” said a veteran employee at Amazon. In his view, middle managers are not ignoring the issues, but senior management clearly prefers to talk about grand “AI visions.”

Within employee forums, “survivor guilt” is a common term. Watching former colleagues’ desks cleared overnight, those remaining haven’t even had time to mourn before being forced to take over the black hole of their colleagues’ work.

CEO Andy Jassy once said layoffs were to eliminate bureaucracy and help Amazon return to the rhythm of the “world’s biggest startup.” He advocates reducing management layers and demands employees take more so-called “ownership.”

But the reality is stark: people are cut, but the work isn’t less.

Several engineers revealed that due to staff shortages, the number of Sev2 (serious incidents requiring immediate response) handled daily has surged.

“Managers are asked to do more with fewer people, and this pressure ultimately falls on the lower-level engineers,” recalled a software engineer who was laid off. “As a result, products are no longer cool; everyone is just rushing to meet deadlines at the expense of quality.”

To keep operations running, engineers have to adopt various compromises, leading to mounting technical debt. These hastily deployed system patches to fill staffing gaps are becoming bigger hidden dangers for the future.

AI Under Surveillance

is it an efficiency tool or digital overseer?

In Amazon’s upper management blueprint, generative AI is seen as a “panacea” for staffing shortages. Jassy even warned shareholders directly in a letter: in the coming years, AI will significantly reduce the total number of employees.

To force the transformation, Amazon has deployed the Kiro developer platform and Q chatbot, and set up a monitoring dashboard called Clarity to track employees’ AI usage in real time.

Hard KPI targets: managers are required to pre-allocate headcount in workforce planning, deducting slots for “AI efficiency improvements.” Forced linkage: some software developers revealed that AI usage has secretly become part of promotion evaluations.

But this forced automation often appears as “artificial stupidity” in the eyes of frontline workers.

Multiple AWS (Amazon Web Services) employees reported that AI can handle simple template code, but struggles with complex business logic. A senior employee lamented, “I don’t see AI replacing anyone; I only see the remaining people desperately trying to cover its mistakes.”

The most awkward incident occurred last December, when Amazon experienced a 13-hour service outage. Internal sources said engineers over-trusted the AI tool Kiro, allowing it to change settings autonomously, which resulted in AI executing a destructive command to “delete and rebuild environment.” Although official statements claimed it was a coincidence, employees knew well: the cost of pushing immature technology is ultimately borne by frontline staff.

The Power Balance

Disappearing Flexibility and the Return of the Office

As the broader environment cools, the power balance quickly tilts toward employers.

Amazon has become one of the few tech giants to mandate a five-day in-office workweek. To monitor attendance, the company even used badge scanning systems. Employees feel that since AI became an “excuse,” management has naturally started to shorten project timelines.

Once professional technical documentation teams have been entirely cut, under the reason that “AI can write,” the tedious task of documentation now falls on overloaded engineers.

This “both-and” high-pressure approach is sparking unprecedented resistance.

“Top management is investing heavily in an elusive future at the cost of our morale and careers,” said an anonymous open letter signed by over 1,000 people. They see AI as a curse—an emblem of cost-cutting, covering up management failures, and energy gambling.

NYU professor Anna Tavis believes Amazon is destroying its foundational roots: “The core of startup culture is trust. If your actions keep destroying trust, you will never achieve high performance.”

Ironic Contrasts

Record profits versus cold banana stands

The most tragic part is the stark contrast between financial reports’ glowing figures and employees’ bleak reality.

Just a week before the layoff announcement, Amazon released an impressive report: revenue in the last three months of 2025 was projected to exceed $211 billion, with over $21 billion in profit. The total profit for the first nine months of 2025 reached $56.5 billion, far surpassing the $39.2 billion in the same period of 2024.

Where did this money go? The answer: infrastructure.

Amazon plans to spend over $100 billion annually, mostly on data centers and AI chips. Duncan Brown, a human resources expert, commented on social media platform X: “While squeezing employees for higher targets, they pour money into tools that could replace them—it’s a morale killer.”

Outside the iconic free banana stand at Seattle headquarters’ Day 1 building, staff still peel and hand out bananas to passersby in the cold wind.

Everything still looks generous and orderly. But employees sitting in nearby cafes, watching news of layoffs on their phones, know that Amazon, once committed to the Day 1 spirit of innovation and trial-and-error, is turning into a precise, cold, emotionless profit machine.

Epilogue

Is this the new industry script?

Amazon isn’t the only company facing this dilemma. Silicon Valley giants are collectively shifting power: reallocating funds from “talent” to “computing power.”

Experts predict that the productivity boost from AI for white-collar workers will ultimately lead to a reduction in job numbers. University of Virginia professor Anton Korinek bluntly stated: “In the medium term, AI will significantly increase productivity for many white-collar jobs, but this increase will ultimately be reflected in a decrease in employment.”

Galletti once reassured that layoffs are not the norm, but she also admitted that to develop AI, companies must stay lean. For Amazon’s 1.5 million employees, this might be the beginning of a long winter. For the entire industry, Amazon’s approach offers a brutal script:

using AI efficiency metrics as a pretext for layoffs; investing saved labor costs into expensive computing races; enforcing mandatory return-to-office policies to induce natural attrition.

In the campus still handing out free bananas, people are facing the deepest question: in an era dominated by algorithms, how much are human experience, emotion, and creativity really worth?