[mikert89]

Right now, amazon is packed full of L6 and L7 software managers, making 450-900k a year, that:

1. dont understand ai

2. have had the same skill set for 10 years

3. are working on autopilot, not trying to get promoted, just collecting paychecks

4. taking zero risk, follow protocol, play politics

for the company to move forwards, they need a massive purge. 15k is childs play. too many employees that make too much money to just maintain status quo

[cmiles74]

Isn’t that the job? I’m not even sure what “understand AI” even means, from where I sit, it maybe means “add AI to everything” and that doesn’t seem that complicated.

I’m not here to defend the people in Amazon corporate, I’m just not convinced it’s okay for a big rich corporation to hire all these people and then fire them on a whim. It’s not like Amazon can’t afford it.

[RHSeeger]

And, to be realistic, "add AI to everything" is a sure sign that the person does _not_ understand AI.

[hsbauauvhabzb]

They might not understand ai, but they do understand how to keep their job and maybe get a promotion, while causing massive problems for everyone else to deal with.

[cmiles74]

Tell that to the people cashing big checks at Microsoft and Google. ;-)

[WalterBright]

> I’m just not convinced it’s okay for a big rich corporation to hire all these people and then fire them on a whim

Amazon doesn't owe anybody a job. Likewise, if you buy groceries from Safeway, you can switch to buying from Walmart anytime.

> It’s not like Amazon can’t afford it.

I'm sure there are a lot of things people don't buy even though they can afford it.

[hahahahhaah]

Amazon got where it was by ruthlessness. What may not be OK is in US you need a job to get healthcare. But other than that people earning that much can't expect job for life type situation like a firefighter or teacher. In US almost everyone is a defacto contractor by virtue of at will employment.

[blibble]

> I’m just not convinced it’s okay for a big rich corporation to hire all these people and then fire them on a whim.

isn't this the American dream?

become Bezos, then exploit every last cent out of your suppliers, employees and customers

[mikert89]

no you dont understand, the whole career ladder at amazon is clogged with people at the company 10+ years, that have been in their role 5+ years. its a big game of dont get fired, and collect pay checks as long as possible

[stanmancan]

Yes that’s how jobs work; you go to work, do your job, try not to get fired, and get paid for the work you do.

Is that supposed to be a bad thing?

[cmiles74]

These are the people Amazon hired, with the qualifications for which Amazon was hiring. If Amazon has some nebulous “career ladder” problem, I believe the fault can be laid at the feet of Amazon’s hiring practices.

Deciding one day to simply fire them all, I guess for doing what they were hired to do, is not okay.

[WalterBright]

> Deciding one day to simply fire them all, I guess for doing what they were hired to do, is not okay.

Business conditions change constantly.

[awesome_dude]

> its a big game of dont get fired, and collect pay checks as long as possible

That pretty much sums it up for 90% of the world's employment...

[Lammy]

Corporations exist to support the lives of humans, not the other way around.

[GolfPopper]

From the corporations' point of view, humans are computing substrate.

Relevant speech by SF author Charlie Stross, from the 34th Chaos Communication Congress in Leipzig, December 2017: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/01/dude-yo...

[nebula8804]

Wow 34c3, what a blast from the past! I still don't fully understand what "tuwat" meant ha ha. The best I could come up with was "Do something. Don't ask for permission".

[charcircuit]

They exist to provide value to other entities. There is no requirement for supporting humans or even having employees.

[SoftTalker]

They exist to do things that individuals could not do.

[mikert89]

they should give some younger people a shot to move into these management positions.

[hdgvhicv]

Maybe those young people should form their own company

[rvz]

This is the correct answer in 2026.

[rvz]

Exactly. This is why it makes absolutely zero sense to join Amazon right now as they are the worst ones to join [0] (Unless you specialize in robotics or actual AI and not controlling 'Agents')

They are aiming to layoff 30k employees this year. They are one bad earnings away from a surprise mass layoff unfortunately.

The other big tech companies are at lesser risk.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46741246

[artyom]

1. they don't understand their own job, why they're even there, let alone AI.

2. yes, if you're talking about basic reading skills at best.

3. correct. except "autopilot" doesn't even mean solving the basic problems they're supposed to solve as part of the role.

4. which is exactly what Amazon asked them to do.

> for the company to move forwards, they need a massive purge.

Absolutely. Starting at the C-suite, VP, and director levels (L8 and above).

Source: I was there.

[evantbyrne]

Culture flows from the top down

[jahnu]

Let me ask this question. Why can Netflix make a decent tv app and Amazon cannot?

[alephnerd]

Amazon Prime Video isn't targeting the US market anymore - they made a hard pivot to India [0][1][2], and as such are primarily investing in MX Player.

[0] - https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/apo...

[1] - https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/prime-video-india-growth-pa...

[2] - https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/prime-video-india-content-c...

[pityJuke]

Wait, when the fuck did the Android app I used to play on-device videos with become a streaming app, that then got acquired by Amazon?!

(I know the literal answer is on Wikipedia, but I’m flabbergasted.)

[alephnerd]

Back in 2018-19 because their founder Karan Bedi was smart and recognized he could leverage his past corporate experience in Big Media in India in order to make MX Player a streaming platform targeting India2 and India3, and thus build a scalable business.

[selimthegrim]

2nd and 3rd tier cities?

[alephnerd]

Yep!

[majormajor]

Lots of companies can make decent apps. And IMO the Prime Video TV/Mobile and Amazon mobile apps are "decent" from a "they do what they're trying to do" standpoint and don't fail all the time.

But they don't really think about things from a "consumer who wants to watch something tonight" vs "shopper who we want to get money from" perspective. So the Prime Video app has been painful to navigate and use. Things like concepts of how people want to interact with TV shows - one top level entry with seasons in it, vs top-level entries per season, which took them forever to change - reflect quick and dirty shoveling of concepts over from how they'd sell box sets or such vs thinking about it from a user-first POV. Or how search will return a match for just about anything because they will happily sell it to you vs having as a default "show any free results first because I'm not looking to spend more right now."

That's a product/vision failure (or just mismatch with what you and I want) not an engineering/engineering culture thing.

[artyom]

This is really easy to answer, with some perspective from the inside, but mostly from public information:

- Amazon has 3 main business lines ("orgs"): Ecommerce, AWS and devices.

- Ecommerce and AWS are (now) cash cows. Devices bleeds money. TV falls into the devices organization.

- Devices was a Bezos bet. Current Amazon couldn't care less honestly.

- The devices organization is (today, after layoffs and people leaving in droves) essentially full of incompetent people, where all the leftovers of the other two orgs end up.

- It's people that was hired to build structure with the sole purpose of some higher-up promotion. They never served any other purpose, neither they have any particularly sophisticated skill.

- That's the people that makes the TV app.

[mikert89]

amazon has mediocre quality talent that they grind to the bone. which worked when the company just needed raw execution. amazon has an operations culture, which was important for:

1. scaling retail

2. keeping the servers running at AWS

all the low hanging fruit has been picked, they need a fundamentally different employee base

[spwa4]

> all the low hanging fruit has been picked, they need a fundamentally different employee base

As anyone in software development can tell you, this does not compute. You cannot do things this way, and any experienced software engineer can tell you it doesn't work.

Besides, it's not how Amazon worked at all. Amazon is famous for having systematically verified ("mathematically proved") how it's core systems operated. Whereas, for example Google only did that in redesigns when the systems had already collapsed once or twice due to scale, not from early on. And even that is superior to how Microsoft or Oracle did it: they bought Google employees and had them design an iteration of what Google is running (yes, is running, not was running. Google redesigned it's core systems ... and then mostly didn't migrate. Borg was never replaced with Omega and the main large system that they migrated to is Spanner. Kubernetes isn't Borg. Kubernetes grew out of Borg's successor. Except Google never migrated away from Borg)

https://cacm.acm.org/practice/systems-correctness-practices-...

I'm sure Amazon had entire departments, much larger than core engineering, just like every other company, where it looked like everything was operationally focused. That doesn't mean core engineering doesn't exist, or does nothing.

[vineyardmike]

Publishing a paper (in 2025) about formal verification is miles different than implementing it company wide. Anyone who has talked to an Amazonian SWE knows they’re not building their systems like this.

The Amazon way is to quickly grind something out, and build on as many layers of AWS abstractions as possible. They’re famous for the hustle and grind not the stellar engineering acumen of formal verification.

[geodel]

Agree. I'd say they may have build 1% systems like this. But impression is whole cloud is built with formal verification

[spwa4]

Goes back quite a bit further: https://www.amazon.science/tag/formal-verification

[SoftTalker]

TV is Netflix's core competency. It's a sideline at best for Amazon.

[Der_Einzige]

Fully agreed and those downvoting you are Amazon employees mad that they don’t get to bully and harass their subordinates anymore.