Matt Garman, chief executive officer (CEO) of Amazon Web Services (AWS), the No. 1 AI cloud, put the brakes on corporations' "AI job-cutting theory," saying, "We should not replace entry-level employees with AI."
CEO Garman said in an interview with the U.S. IT outlet Wired on the 16th (local time), "If you want to build a company that grows over the long term, you should not even begin to replace developers with AI." Regarding the claim to eliminate entry-level engineers and staff and leave only skilled workers and AI agents, he dismissed it as "the most foolish idea."
He said entry-level employees are the most familiar with AI tools and the least expensive labor, emphasizing, "If you are thinking about expense optimization, you should not only move in the direction of cutting them." He also warned that if hiring at the entry level stops, the "pipeline" for developing talent will be severed, which could undermine the company's vitality and innovation.
However, he said that the way people work will change significantly as AI advances, noting, "If you do not embrace change, you may fall behind those who do," and predicted, "Some jobs will disappear or shrink, but in the mid to long term, more new jobs will be created."
Despite CEO Garman's message, parent company Amazon laid off 14,000 people in the two months from October to November, and AWS also reportedly cut hundreds. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the layoffs were "not for financial reasons, and not because of AI right now," describing them as a workforce realignment for organizational culture and business restructuring.