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Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce

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Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce

#111
post #26

I think the fair way to read any CEO's comments about AI reducing their workforce at this point has nothing to do with the capabilities of AI and more to do with the revenue outlook or the growth outlook. Basically, they are "narrative shopping" to save face with the stock market... and IMO it might work. Just a basic sniff test though - If AI enables developer productivity that would translate to more revenue, reduc…

> I think the fair way to read any CEO's comments about AI reducing their workforce at this point has nothing to do with the capabilities of AI… You can legitimately argue "far less to do with", but it's definitely not nothing. There are countless projects underway where AI will allow for 10% reductions with zero business impact in the short term, and 25-40% reductions (sometimes more) by 2030.

> There are countless projects underway where AI will allow for 10% reductions with zero business impact in the short term, and 25-40% reductions (sometimes more) by 2030.

Are there any where it empirically _has_ done, or are we still in jam tomorrow mode? Like, there is a very big industry devoted to selling this stuff; I'd be _extremely_ cautious about promises and projections.

Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious, where are these numbers from ?

These are realistic (IMHO, of course) projections based on studies I've helped with and conversations I've had with my network. Naturally, the impact will vary enormously based on roles, and the timelines won't be evenly distributed. But these kinds of projections aren't unusual at all — if you use the Deep Research capabilities of modern models to build a list of public projections for your own research, you'll see…

> These reports will generally use the framing of "efficiency gains", where AI will "free-up employees from drudgery to focus on higher-value work"

Okay, but what are these reports _based_ on? Everything I've seen along these lines has been, essentially, marketing material; there seems to be very little hard data suggesting this kind of outcome.

Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce

#113

HN is so weirdly optimistic that SWE jobs will not decline terribly in the age of LLMs. Yes claude code can not write a new web browser from scratch or even some innovative project, but almost nobody is doing that. Most of non big tech is writing the same CRUD apps with trivial differences. Even 90% of big tech (outside the core infra) is just writing CRUD apps. I have worked at two big tech companies in fairly senio…

> HN is so weirdly optimistic that SWE jobs will not decline terribly in the age of LLMs.

I mean, this is about the fourth "this will massively reduce the need for programmers" thing in the last 20 years. And it increasing feels like the previous ones; lots of hype, lots of marketing, very little empirical evidence that it's doing anything much.

For CRUD stuff _in particular_, people have been promising CRUD without icky programmers any day now for longer than most users of this website have been alive.

Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are totally correct. Most of big tech has way too many SWEs (which if good for society definitely), but I don't see that number surviving LLMs.

Can AI build Google? 100,000 developers can.

It is irrelevant whether it can or can not, since most SWEs are not building google but building yet another CRUD API.(and Google was not built by 100k developers but a much smaller but extremely talented small number of developers).

Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce

#115
post #110
post #16

Because I continue to collect definitions of "agent", here's what Andy Jassy said in that memo: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-ceo-and... > Think of agents as software systems that use AI to perform tasks on behalf of users or other systems. Agents let you tell them what you want (often in natural language), and do things like scour the web (and various data sources) and summarize results, engag…

I appreciate you keeping up the fight for correct terminology! I think at this point though there is a "standard" definition of agent - an AI that can actually utilize external real-world tools to do things on behalf of users. That fits coding agents, web-using agents, etc. Do you think there's still confusion around it like there was a year ago?

Definitely. The one you are using there is pretty much the accepted software engineering definition now, but if you talk to non-engineers you'll still hear all sorts of variants about things like travel agents or UI automation or "autonomy" without explaining what that means.

Anthropic use the tools-in-a-loop one quite consistently now, but OpenAI still sometimes say things like "AI agents are AI systems that can do work for you independently. You give them a task and they go off and do it." - https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jan/23/introducing-operator/

Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce

#116
post #100
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, however the pitch itself is telling. They're not saying "we're expecting AI to boost the productivity of our employees by 20% with no increase in labor costs." They're saying "we're going to spend less on humans" because investors are more ok with spending money on machines than people. That's the problem, they're not looking at how AI enhances people, they're looking at how it can eliminate people.

Why would you expect different? Companies don't exist to benefit their employees (or their customers).

Boosting second sentence here, because I think it is a foundational problem for a company trying to behave like Apple.

If the company was owned primarily by employees and customers I think it would be more likely to carry out its mission.

Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What studies? MIT estimates only 5% of the workforce can be replaced long term. What tasks are you employees using AI on, CMU shows the best llm only has a ~30% success rate for basic business tasks. Are you a vibe coding start up or something?

> MIT estimates only 5% of the workforce can be replaced long term. The model by MIT's Daron Acemoglu estimates that ~5% of U.S. tasks can be completely and profitably automated by AI within ten years. It was expressly not a head-count forecast, and didn't attempt to quantify the headcount reduction that AI augmentation could enable.

i think profitably is the key word here, since AI orgs are burning ungodly amounts of money and electricity and will expect to recoup that money.

Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce

#118
are you not grounded in the same reality as I am? outlook for Amazon looks incredible between, AI, AWS, Adverts, shopping. Amazon has been "reducing corporate workforce" in fulfillment centers for years, why would anyone think that they would not apply the same operating model to knowledge work? AI does not need to be particularly good to replace what many office workers, and junior IT staff do everyday. I think what scares people about Amazon is that they are actually finding success replacing human workers with machines.

Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce

#119
post #34
post #26

I think the fair way to read any CEO's comments about AI reducing their workforce at this point has nothing to do with the capabilities of AI and more to do with the revenue outlook or the growth outlook. Basically, they are "narrative shopping" to save face with the stock market... and IMO it might work. Just a basic sniff test though - If AI enables developer productivity that would translate to more revenue, reduc…

It has more to do with the workforce wage demands and their output. Imagine if we all think that AI will get rid of our job at some point. We will work harder and demand less money do that work. All large corps did huge coordinated cuts in workforce in 2022-2023, and now there's this narrative. They are simply trying to get us to do more work for less money.

Even hiring people at minimum wage costs a lot of money... Maybe they are firing people so they can rehire at a lower cost, but thats a really expensive way to get people to work for less.

Re: Amazon CEO says AI agents will soon reduce company's corporate workforce

#120
post #100
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, however the pitch itself is telling. They're not saying "we're expecting AI to boost the productivity of our employees by 20% with no increase in labor costs." They're saying "we're going to spend less on humans" because investors are more ok with spending money on machines than people. That's the problem, they're not looking at how AI enhances people, they're looking at how it can eliminate people.

Why would you expect different? Companies don't exist to benefit their employees (or their customers).

I would expect different because there are two major philosophies in business, and they indicate the direction a business will go. There is the philosophy of focus on profit/growth, or focus on costs/value-extraction.

Before anyone straw mans "but you can do both", yes, you can, but only one can be the MAIN way you run a business.

A focus on profit and growth will lead to seeing employees as strategic resources ready to be deployed to serve the business and generate revenue. One wants to enable those employees with the best matching tools that enable the employee to do more. In this case, a growth leader would say "AI can make our people 20% more productive without adding headcount, and lets us refocus another 10% of employees to more productive/profitable tasks, better utilizing the internal knowledge those employees have. These are the companies that tend to become more profitable and successful because leaders understand that good employees are an asset, not a liability.

The other focus, on costs and value extraction, see the business as a zero sum game; in order to increase profits, we must decrease costs or find a way to extract more value from customers. These are the companies that will reduce service levels with no change in pricing to improve profits. They'll understaff a facility to see the "true minimum number of employees" (the bare minimum), depending on some employees to go "above and beyond" to get things done for no additional compensation. They'll get rid of expensive employees, settle for replacements employees who are 75% as good but will work for 65% of the money, and keep headcount the same; worse service, but proportionally lower costs. These are the companies that maybe be huge, but they're not market leaders, they're reactive and basically rent takers.

When a leader begins to resent employees being paid to do their work, it's time for that leader to go, because they'll simply start that company on a decline.

Basically, there are those who understand the difference between cost and value, and those who are too focused on cost to even understand value. If your first response to AI is "we can cut people" you're in the latter camp. Your first reaction is to cut costs, rather than to exploit the new tech for even higher profits.

Eyes on the future instead of the past is how you grow and succeed. Employee success leads to company success. Employees are not a cost center.

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