I’ve had another one of my posts on LinkedIn go viral: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7388737736590909440/

Turns out, part of the reason why is because I’ve become internet famous: https://www.reddit.com/r/jobs/comments/1oicvgs/18year_amazon_veteran_ive_never_seen_layoffs_this/

I’m amused by the number of people that don’t believe that I’m as old as I am. Or that think that AI didn’t exist 25 years ago. It’s even more funny to me, because I often make the joke of saying “I graduated back in ’94, with a degree in AI, because that’s what they called it back then.” (Yes, it’s a nerd dad joke, but I’m a dad, and a nerd, so I get a pass.) It’s playing off the idea that the term “Machine Learning” didn’t exist until recently, but “AI” has been around for a long time. Neither of which is true, really; both terms were coined back in the 1950’s.

Maybe we should start an “I’m so old” contest in the comments? I’m so old that I still have my childhood Osborn 1 in my store room. I’m so old that the first computer game I 100%’d was Zork II. I’m so old I remember the smell of mimeograph ink. I’m so old that I know the tings and pings of a 1200 baud modem, and I know what baud means. And I’m so old that the textbook for my college AI class was a stack of laser printer printouts of a draft of the professor’s friend’s pre-print book, because there pretty much wasn’t any other AI textbooks available, yet.

My profile on LinkedIn is up to date and accurate, by the way (as of October 28, 2025). Maybe I should add “concentration in Artificial Intelligence” to my degree blurb?

I’m going to copy-paste the contents of the LinkedIn post below (obviously without the comments). I encourage civil discussion, and I’m happy to answer any questions. Enjoy!

And, because I’m fair and honest, I will concede one potential misstatement: my direct experience with layoffs at Amazon goes back as far as the financial crisis of 2008. But I also worked in tech during the .com bubble, and I did a lot of interviewing for Amazon in 2008. So when the 2008 crisis rolled around, and we had a hiring freeze, I asked my more wizened peers about the last time something like it had happened – which was the .com crash. They said it was bad, but only for a little while. So I concede: (1) my experience with how Amazon fared during the .com crash was first-order anecdotal (meaning I spoke to colleagues, who were there during the crisis, AFTER the crisis, about their memories of it); and (2) my direct experience started with the financial crisis in 2008.

I maintain that during my tenure (and based on first-order anecdotes from before it), and until now, I don’t believe that Amazon ever had a period where there were layoffs for multiple years running.

In my 18 years at Amazon, I went through a few layoffs and hiring freezes. This is the first time I’ve seen multiple years of significant layoffs essentially back-to-back. Even in the depths after the .com bubble, it wasn’t this bad. They’ve been laying people off now for almost 3 straight years.

The explanation that this is downsizing after hiring too many a the height of the pandemic doesn’t pass the smell test, at least to me. That was 3 years ago; they’re not that dumb to keep those people around for 3 extra years. Those folks were laid off back in ’22.

I’m also not convinced that this is optimizations due to AI. My degree’s in AI, and I worked on AI stuff at Amazon; I don’t think there’s enough automation yet, and it’s not accurate enough yet, to replace 30,000 people. The cost of inaccuracies seems too high. But I could be wrong; maybe they’ve gotten their false negative & false positive rates low enough to avoid too many region-wide AWS outages. (Or not.)

One of the articles I read said this was going to be in HR, and I can tell you as a former manager, my experience working with HR had been steadily worsening over the past 5-7 years. They outsourced so much of the work, overworked the people they had, and had such high turnover that I never knew who I was supposed to work with. When I needed to put someone on a performance plan or help a new hire receive some kind of accommodation, it seemed like it was a different person each time. If they really are laying off tens of thousands more HR folks, this is only going to get worse.

And, I suspect, it means they don’t plan on hiring MORE people – in any of the business units – for a year or more.

So, by the smell-o-meter, this seems more significant than streamlining workforce, improved AI, and “nah, we don’t need as many HR folks.”

If you’re an Amazonian, and find out tomorrow that you’re soon to be a former Amazonian, let me know, I’ll be happy to chat. It’s a weird world out there these days. Good luck, my friends!