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> It is a fact that there have been 27,000+ Amazonians impacted by layoffs between 2022 and 2024, continuing into 2025. It's hard to know how many of these were

> It is a fact that there have been 27,000+ Amazonians impacted by layoffs between 2022 and 2024, continuing into 2025. It's hard to know how many of these were AWS versus other parts of its Amazon parent, because the company is notoriously tight-lipped about staffing issues. Internal documents reportedly say that Amazon suffers from 69 percent to 81 percent regretted attrition across all employment levels. In other words, "people quitting who we wish didn't." The internet is full of anecdata of senior Amazonians lamenting the hamfisted approach of their Return to Office initiative; experts have weighed in citing similar concerns. So the title is all speculation. The author put 2 and 2 together and concluded that 10 is greater than 9. Worthless article.

samrus 1y ago
Just because its speculation doesnt mean its worthless. But yeah it should be taken as speculation rather than a validated and tested hypithesis
- behnamoh 1y ago
  Anything that wastes my time and only reveals its half-assed reasoning half way through the article is indeed worthless.
  - a0123 1y ago
    You could make smart inferences based on past and very frequent occurrences. Or you could just say "there is no way the thing that constantly happens over and over again has happened once again, just no way". Staff cuts constantly happen in the name of maximising profits. They always yield poor results for a company's performance. Every time. Especially for the consumer's side of it (not the company's finances of course). Every time. But maybe this time it's different. That one time.
  - bryanlarsen 1y ago
    First time reading El Reg?
  - toofy 1y ago
    i mean, you can assume if its on theregister its not going to have some kind of academic rigor or whatever it might be you're looking for. its the register, same basic rigor quality as the ny post. that said, my suspicion is they're likely on to something here regarding layoffs and quality degradation.
JustExAWS 1y ago
I worked at AWS and still have friends who work there. I don’t know any L5s who wouldn’t jump at a chance to leave if they even got a slightly worse offer than what they are making now. I know a few L6s and L7s that would stick around out of momentum. But I know very few people in the industry who know about Amazon’s reputation that have a life long dream of working there given a choice. I was 46 when I was hired there for a “permanently remote [sic] field by design role” in ProServe and it was my 8th job out of college. I went in with my eyes wide open. I had a plan, stay for four years, sell my RSUs as soon as they vested, pay off debt, save some money, put it on my resume to open doors and make connections and leave. I was never expecting to make more when I left. I used the time to downsize and reduce my expenses - including moving to state tax free Florida. When I saw the writing on the wall, I played the game while I was on focus to get my next vest and wait for the “get 40k+ severance and leave immediately or try to work through the PIP”. I took the latter and had three offers within 3 weeks. This was late 2023.
- azemetre 1y ago
  How long did you stick it out? Were you close toward completing your plan?
  - JustExAWS 1y ago
    Close enough. I missed 2 vesting periods. But the severance and rapidly having a job made up for one and I got refreshers my third year that I hadn’t counted on. I left debt free, sold my old home for exactly twice what I had built for 8 years earlier, downsized to a condo half the price I sold it for (and 1/3 the size) and I was debt free with savings. I’m now a staff consultant working full time at a 3rd party AWS consulting firm with a lot less stress and still remote. They were the last to fall. But AWS made their ProServe department return to office at the beginning of this year.
    - ferguess_k 1y ago
      Ah that's really nice for you. Congratulations for gritting the teeth and making through all those years.
dijit 1y ago
Maybe its speculation, but I mean drawing conclusions becomes easy when 40% of devops staff being laid off by AWS was in the news three days ago. https://blog.stackademic.com/aws-just-fired-40-of-its-devops-team-then-let-ai-take-their-jobs-d9db9d298bfa https://blog.stackademic.com/aws-just-fired-40-of-its-devops...
- placardloop 1y ago
  AWS doesn’t even have a “devops team” nor even any devops job roles. AWS also does not use Terraform (which is what the article says everyone was replaced with) at any significant scale, so this article is similar junk.
  - dijit 1y ago
    Uh, they still have roles open for DevOps: https://amazon.jobs/en/jobs/3080348/devops-engineer-linux-region-services https://amazon.jobs/en/jobs/3080348/devops-engineer-linux-re... https://amazon.jobs/en/jobs/3082914/devops-systems-engineer-managed-operations https://amazon.jobs/en/jobs/3082914/devops-systems-engineer-... This one mentions terraform by name (though that doesn't necessarily imply its in use, though having worked in large companies I would argue that sweeping statements about a popular technology not being used is likely to be wrong) https://amazon.jobs/en/jobs/3042892/delivery-consultant-devops-aws-professional-services#:~:text=The%20Amazon%20Web%20Services%20Professional,technical%20requirements%20and%20business%20objectives. https://amazon.jobs/en/jobs/3042892/delivery-consultant-devo...
    - placardloop 1y ago
      AWS does not have dedicated devops roles. All AWS SWEs are expected to take oncall shifts and respond to incidents, manage build pipelines, etc rather than having specific devops people to do it for them. The article you linked claiming 40% of them were fired is total junk. You can believe that or not, I don’t care. The last one is a ProServe role, which is a consulting role that spends their time working in customer environments, which is where they may encounter terraform. It does not mean anything about internal use of terraform.

samrus 1y ago

Just because its speculation doesnt mean its worthless. But yeah it should be taken as speculation rather than a validated and tested hypithesis

behnamoh 1y ago
Anything that wastes my time and only reveals its half-assed reasoning half way through the article is indeed worthless.
- a0123 1y ago
  You could make smart inferences based on past and very frequent occurrences. Or you could just say "there is no way the thing that constantly happens over and over again has happened once again, just no way". Staff cuts constantly happen in the name of maximising profits. They always yield poor results for a company's performance. Every time. Especially for the consumer's side of it (not the company's finances of course). Every time. But maybe this time it's different. That one time.
- bryanlarsen 1y ago
  First time reading El Reg?
- toofy 1y ago
  i mean, you can assume if its on theregister its not going to have some kind of academic rigor or whatever it might be you're looking for. its the register, same basic rigor quality as the ny post. that said, my suspicion is they're likely on to something here regarding layoffs and quality degradation.

JustExAWS 1y ago

I worked at AWS and still have friends who work there. I don’t know any L5s who wouldn’t jump at a chance to leave if they even got a slightly worse offer than what they are making now. I know a few L6s and L7s that would stick around out of momentum. But I know very few people in the industry who know about Amazon’s reputation that have a life long dream of working there given a choice. I was 46 when I was hired there for a “permanently remote [sic] field by design role” in ProServe and it was my 8th job out of college. I went in with my eyes wide open. I had a plan, stay for four years, sell my RSUs as soon as they vested, pay off debt, save some money, put it on my resume to open doors and make connections and leave. I was never expecting to make more when I left. I used the time to downsize and reduce my expenses - including moving to state tax free Florida. When I saw the writing on the wall, I played the game while I was on focus to get my next vest and wait for the “get 40k+ severance and leave immediately or try to work through the PIP”. I took the latter and had three offers within 3 weeks. This was late 2023.

azemetre 1y ago
How long did you stick it out? Were you close toward completing your plan?
- JustExAWS 1y ago
  Close enough. I missed 2 vesting periods. But the severance and rapidly having a job made up for one and I got refreshers my third year that I hadn’t counted on. I left debt free, sold my old home for exactly twice what I had built for 8 years earlier, downsized to a condo half the price I sold it for (and 1/3 the size) and I was debt free with savings. I’m now a staff consultant working full time at a 3rd party AWS consulting firm with a lot less stress and still remote. They were the last to fall. But AWS made their ProServe department return to office at the beginning of this year.
  - ferguess_k 1y ago
    Ah that's really nice for you. Congratulations for gritting the teeth and making through all those years.

dijit 1y ago

Maybe its speculation, but I mean drawing conclusions becomes easy when 40% of devops staff being laid off by AWS was in the news three days ago. https://blog.stackademic.com/aws-just-fired-40-of-its-devops-team-then-let-ai-take-their-jobs-d9db9d298bfa https://blog.stackademic.com/aws-just-fired-40-of-its-devops...

placardloop 1y ago
AWS doesn’t even have a “devops team” nor even any devops job roles. AWS also does not use Terraform (which is what the article says everyone was replaced with) at any significant scale, so this article is similar junk.
- dijit 1y ago
  Uh, they still have roles open for DevOps: https://amazon.jobs/en/jobs/3080348/devops-engineer-linux-region-services https://amazon.jobs/en/jobs/3080348/devops-engineer-linux-re... https://amazon.jobs/en/jobs/3082914/devops-systems-engineer-managed-operations https://amazon.jobs/en/jobs/3082914/devops-systems-engineer-... This one mentions terraform by name (though that doesn't necessarily imply its in use, though having worked in large companies I would argue that sweeping statements about a popular technology not being used is likely to be wrong) https://amazon.jobs/en/jobs/3042892/delivery-consultant-devops-aws-professional-services#:~:text=The%20Amazon%20Web%20Services%20Professional,technical%20requirements%20and%20business%20objectives. https://amazon.jobs/en/jobs/3042892/delivery-consultant-devo...
  - placardloop 1y ago
    AWS does not have dedicated devops roles. All AWS SWEs are expected to take oncall shifts and respond to incidents, manage build pipelines, etc rather than having specific devops people to do it for them. The article you linked claiming 40% of them were fired is total junk. You can believe that or not, I don’t care. The last one is a ProServe role, which is a consulting role that spends their time working in customer environments, which is where they may encounter terraform. It does not mean anything about internal use of terraform.