Simply weeks in the past in January, Amazon laid off round 16,000 workers, after slicing roughly 14,000 roles within the last months of 2025. In complete the e-commerce large let go of round 30,000 workers and rumours counsel that a couple of extra are in retailer because it leans extra closely into automation and AI. And but, there’s one other aspect of the story, the one which AWS chief Matt Garman is highlighting. In an interview Garman has stated that AI will not be changing software program builders and that Amazon intends to rent 11,000 interns and builders in 2026.
Talking at AWS What’s Subsequent occasion, Garman on Tuesday famous that Amazon would proceed to rent, and demand for software program engineers remained robust. The CEO confirmed that this yr Amazon plans to rent round 11,000 software program growth interns and full-time workers.
It’s value noting that the most recent spherical of layoffs additionally affected the cloud division, AWS, with a number of managerial roles being reduce. Nonetheless, Garman pushed again in opposition to the narrative that AI was impacting jobs. He argued that it was not eliminating roles however reshaping them. He stated the concept AI brokers had been wiping out jobs was overblown.
“I can inform you we’re hiring simply as many software program builders as we ever had inside Amazon,” Garman stated. “And in reality, I see the demand for that basically accelerating.” He added that Amazon deliberate to rent round 11,000 software program growth engineer (SDE) interns and full-time workers this yr, stressing that “this isn’t jobs going away.”
In response to Garman, what’s altering quickly will not be the variety of jobs, however the nature of them. AI brokers — that are the programs that may function autonomously and constantly — are actually “exploding throughout each trade” and evolving sooner than anticipated.
These brokers are more and more taking on repetitive, time-consuming duties comparable to debugging, writing routine code, or dealing with operational workflows. However as a substitute of decreasing the necessity for engineers, Garman argues, they’re releasing builders to give attention to higher-value work like system design, structure, and fixing complicated buyer issues.
“The roles will likely be a bit bit totally different,” he stated, noting that whereas writing small code snippets might grow to be much less important, understanding how programs match collectively is changing into extra precious than ever.
Garman added that this shift is already seen inside Amazon. Groups are fixing bugs in minutes as a substitute of weeks and rebuilding massive programs considerably sooner utilizing AI-assisted instruments. Sharing one such instance from his workplace, Garman notes {that a} venture that was anticipated to take two years was accomplished in simply two quarters, highlighting how AI is compressing growth timelines slightly than shrinking groups.
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