Wow – I can’t tell you how familiar this sounded. I didn’t work for Amazon, but what she is describing here is almost exactly what my experience was at a different top 25 high tech company during COVID.

• Mass hiring during COVID that was not justified for the work present nor profitability
• Senior leadership now using ‘investing in AI’ and return-to-office mandates as ways to trim headcount and give air cover to their bad over-hiring. (Using AI every day for work now is a real thing – but not as justification for the kinds of layoffs we’re seeing).
• Culture rot from an innovation driven environment to political one.
• Engineers that spend the majority of your day not doing technical work but stuck in meetings/roadmaps/ planning/spinning stories to get real work done. Meanwhile not one thing is shipped on time.
• Feeling hollow and empty realizing you’re spending 60-80% of the average day doing planning, paper shuffling, org alignment, and meetings instead of real work.