{"id":88602,"date":"2026-06-28T12:15:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T12:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/88602\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T12:15:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T12:15:21","slug":"aws-ceo-matt-garman-says-ai-displacing-junior-employees-is-bad-for-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/88602\/","title":{"rendered":"AWS CEO Matt Garman says AI displacing junior employees is bad for business"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year, Garman said<\/a> replacing junior software developers with AI was \u201cone of the dumbest things I\u2019ve ever heard,\u201d and it\u2019s a point he stands by. In an interview with Wired<\/a>, Garman said displacing junior engineers and employees with new tech is a bad business move.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Entry-level workers are usually paid the least, meaning getting rid of their positions first in favor of higher-paid senior talent is not a cost-effective strategy, he noted. Moreso, these fresh-faced young workers are likely recent college graduates with energy, excitement, and deep familiarity with AI tools. Eliminating them, in Garman\u2019s eyes, would be myopic.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt some point that whole thing explodes on itself,\u201d Garman said. \u201cIf you have no talent pipeline that you\u2019re building and no junior people that you\u2019re mentoring and bringing up through the company, we often find that that\u2019s where we get some of the best ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve gotta think longer term about the health of a company,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd just saying \u2018OK great, we\u2019re never going to hire junior people anymore,\u2019 that\u2019s just a nonstarter for anyone who\u2019s trying to build a long-term company.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an episode of the\u00a0Platformer\u00a0podcast<\/a>\u00a0released this week, Garman said Amazon plans to hire 11,000 interns and recent graduates in 2026. The tech giant has more software developers today than two years ago, despite the advancement of AI coding tools.<\/p>\n

Data has so far painted a muddy picture of how AI is impacting labor more broadly. A Stanford University study<\/a> published last August suggested AI is already starting to have its way with entry-level workers. The research revealed that \u201cthe AI revolution\u201d is having a \u201csignificant and disproportionate impact on entry-level workers in the U.S. labor market,\u201d particularly 22- to 25-year-old software engineers and customer service agents. <\/p>\n

However, while the unemployment rate for recent college graduates, about 5.6%, sits higher than the general unemployment rate of 4.2%, this gap emerged six months before the November 2022 release of ChatGPT and has not widened significantly since then, leading economists like Apollo\u2019s Torsten Slok to attribute young people\u2019s job struggles to broader economic factors<\/a>, not AI.<\/p>\n

What are Amazon\u2019s workforce shakeups?<\/p>\n

Despite Garman\u2019s assertions that Amazon is hiring young talent, the company\u2019s own automation advancements have coincided with the company laying off thousands of employees<\/a> last fall and this January. The tech giant announced last October it would slash 14,000 jobs, mostly middle management positions<\/a>. Earlier last year, Amazon laid off a smaller portion of workers from divisions including AWS, its Wondery podcast division, and the consumer devices unit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rather than attribute the axings to AI, Amazon instead said the layoffs were part of an effort to make the business more efficient after a period of growth, as well as resolve cultural mismatches<\/a> that emerged in the workforce.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe announcement that we made a few days ago was not really financially driven, and it\u2019s not even really AI-driven, not right now at least,\u201d CEO Andy Jassy said at the time. \u201cIt\u2019s culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, AI advancements are poised to impact Amazon\u2019s workforce. The memo<\/a> outlining the fall layoffs cites the transforming technology of AI as the impetus for improving workflows with leaner teams. A June 2025 memo<\/a> from the company said AI efficiency gains will \u201creduce our total corporate workforce,\u201d and a New York Times investigation<\/a> published in October reported Amazon had a lofty goal to automate 75% of its work, translating to about 600,000 jobs the tech giant would not ultimately need to hire for.<\/p>\n

How AI is creating a labor transformation<\/p>\n

Garman isn\u2019t naive to the workplace upheaval AI could bring, but he also refuses to catastrophize <\/a>the future of jobs as the use of the technology proliferates. On the Platformer podcast, Garman argued AI will reshape work, but not eliminate the need for it altogether. The transformation will necessitate new jobs, and while some jobs may change, work is necessary to keep an economy in motion.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you believe that half of jobs get wiped out, the whole economy collapses on itself,\u201d he said. \u201cEverything goes away. You\u2019re not going to have AI, and then you have to go back to those other jobs at some point. The math doesn\u2019t work out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, the future of tech jobs amid the AI boom could mirror the introduction of Microsoft<\/a> Excel, which eliminated the need for workers making calculations manually, but encouraged others to adapt and learn the new tool. <\/p>\n

\u201cI do think that half of white-collar jobs may change, but wipe out and change are different,\u201d Garman said.<\/p>\n

A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on Dec. 16, 2025.<\/p>\n

More on AI and entry-level workers:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last year, Garman said replacing junior software developers with AI was \u201cone of the dumbest things I\u2019ve ever…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,321,25,47003,2985,781,2821],"class_list":["post-88602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-amazon","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-entry-level","tag-evergreen-refresh","tag-tech","tag-the-future-of-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}