Amazon’s official rationale is that AI is “enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before.” Because of that, an HR executive explained, the company needs to be “organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible.” That sounds a little different from “AI’s taking 10% of our jobs,” but I think it’s effectively the same thing. Even though tech has long mythologized the benefits of lean teams, large businesses still needed armies of people to keep everything running; deep cuts risked stretching the remaining staff too thin. With AI’s growing capabilities, executives don’t seem worried about that anymore.
More companies are sure to follow Amazon