At Amazon, some engineers are worried about the quality of their work due to the impact of AI
There have long been concerns that the spread of AI could take away white-collar jobs, but at the same time, there have been reported cases where people are confused by changes in the quality of their work even before they become unemployed.
At Amazon, Some Coders Say Their Jobs Have Begun to Resemble Warehouse Work - The New York Times
In March 2025, Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, a company that provides customer relationship management solutions, announced that the company would not be hiring any new engineers in 2025 due to the successful implementation of its AI agent, Agentforce.
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NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang also believes that programming will no longer be essential as AI will take over coding.
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These trends indicate that AI is beginning to replace jobs that have previously been performed by humans.
Amazon is also seeing a rapid change in its coding culture due to its big investment in generative AI, with insiders telling The New York Times that the company has been raising performance targets and tightening deadlines.
One Amazon engineer said that despite having half the team members, AI has allowed them to write the same amount of code as before.
However, the productivity improvements brought about by AI seem to be changing the job of engineers from 'writing code' to 'reading code written by AI.' Simon Willison, a well-known programmer and frequent user of AI, speaks for the dissatisfaction of workers, saying, 'I find writing code more enjoyable than reading it. Code review is never a fun job. When you work with tools like AI, the majority of your job is code review.'
Harper Reed, a longtime programmer who, like Willison, served as chief technology officer for Barack Obama's reelection campaign, agreed that there could be problems with career advancement in the world of AI, but he cautioned against overestimating the value of having a deep understanding of your own code. 'It's crazy to have a human measuring every angle in an auto factory to make sure it's right,' he said. 'It's not as important as it was when a group of people were hammering away at a sheet of metal.'
A union called Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, which includes many of Amazon's engineers, has been calling on Amazon to reduce its carbon footprint and has been an outlet for Amazon's labor-related frustrations, including a mandatory return to work. Union organizers say that in recent days, workers have been talking more about the stress of using AI at work.
'Career prospects and quality of work are the main complaints,' said Eliza Pang, a former Amazon employee and spokesperson for the AECJ.
AECJ
https://www.amazonclimatejustice.org/
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