Andy Jassey Says AI is Taking Your Tech Job

Times are worrying. Tech workers are still being laid off after “over hiring” during Covid, and it’s tricky to land a new position when interviews resemble the Hunger Games (but with more rounds).

Then there’s AI. It’s likely to come and take away our jobs, if some naysayers and unimpressive bloggers are to be believed. 

Yet this week we have another inflection point. Andy “I’m not Jeff Bezos” Jassey, in a corporate memo, announced 

“We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs” 

Without mentioning which jobs were going. Thanks Jeff (Andy).

I’m Scared

Amazon is a big deal, so although their CEO isn’t Jeff Bezos the position of CEO is a big deal.

Amazon has 1.5 million corporate jobs and is a tech company (albeit not one you really want to work for, unless you love being “frugal”).

Andy went on and explained.

“It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company”

This is likely to be repeated across the corporate tech landscape. I’ve heard the CEO of DoorDash try to calm the waters and say that they think that staff will be able to do more without laying off staff. The problem is even if staff are not laid off (and corporations simply employ natural shrinkage and don’t replace staff when they choose to leave) when software engineers want to leave, there won’t be anywhere else to go.

Conclusion

AI is coming. Like it or not (and I’ve seen plenty of laggards at work). 

Amazon might be right, might be wrong.

We don’t know.

Isn’t it time for you to prepare though?