Amazon Cuts 30,000 Jobs While Investing $100 Billion in AI, Yet Keeps Engineer Hiring Steady

Amazon announced two major layoff waves—14,000 jobs cut in October and another 16,000 in January—bringing the six‑month corporate reduction past 30,000. The reductions span corporate functions such as recruiting, marketing, and middle management, while warehouse and delivery staff saw few cuts. At the same time, the company has funneled close to $100 billion into data centers, chips, and other AI‑focused infrastructure. Leaders frame the moves as a streamlining effort to reduce management layers.

AWS CEO Matt Garman told attendees at the "What's Next with AWS" event that Amazon is hiring as many software developers as it ever has. He added that the firm plans to bring on 11,000 software‑development‑engineer interns and early‑career full‑time hires globally in 2026, a figure consistent with prior years. Garman noted that the engineer role is shifting: writing isolated Java snippets will matter less, while building end‑to‑end applications, understanding customer needs, and fluency with cloud services will grow in importance.

Garman's stance contrasts with more dire predictions from some AI builders; for example, Anthropic’s Boris Cherny has suggested the "software engineer" title could disappear as AI takes over coding, and Andreessen Horowitz’s Martin Casado calls the discipline disrupted. Amazon’s own CEO Andy Jassy warned in a June 2025 memo that AI will trim total corporate headcount over the next few years, mainly through attrition rather than mass layoffs. The current layoffs appear to follow that attrition‑driven path, even as the company seeks to replenish technical talent. What to watch next: whether the evolving skill mix leads to a net gain or loss in engineering roles as AI tools mature and hiring pipelines adjust.