The new Amazon: How employees are navigating AI, RTO, and a shifting culture

• Amazon has reshaped its workforce, policies, and strategy in recent years.
• Employees say layoffs, AI, and return-to-office policies are changing their work and lives.
• These changes have created new opportunities for some — and new challenges for others.

Amazon's hardcore culture transformation is becoming a case study in the employee-employer relationship in the AI era.

Companies from AT&T to Walmart are following Amazon's lead, cracking down on efficiency and accountability. With more than double the combined headcount of Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, and Meta, changes at Amazon carry far-reaching implications for America's workers.

While some of the effects of stricter performance reviews, return-to-office policies, and massive rounds of layoffs impact workers right away, other changes take time to trickle down to employees' day-to-day work and personal lives. Twelve Amazon workers told Business Insider what life has been like as they settle into a new normal.

Layoffs are raising the stakes for those who remain

Few changes have been more impactful than layoffs.

When Joanelle Cobos was laid off from her design manager role at Amazon last October, she decided to take a few months to reset. After ramping up her search in January, she struggled to land interviews. She estimated she has less than a year before her funds run dry.

"My job search feels like a ticking time bomb," she said.

After doubling its workforce between 2019 and 2021, Amazon has laid off more than 57,000 corporate employees, with more than half the cuts coming in October and January. The layoffs included managers, as part of an effort to reduce management layers and increase worker-to-manager ratios by 15%.

Laid-off workers have been forced to navigate a labor market where hiring has slowed. While some have managed to find new roles, others are still looking.

The effects of layoffs extend beyond those who lost their jobs. The fear of more cuts has pushed some employees, already facing stricter performance reviews, to step up their work to protect their jobs and avoid being placed on a performance improvement plan.

An employee based in Berlin said recent layoff rounds contributed to a culture of "put your elbows out and try to stay afloat."

"It's very tense," he said soon after the January layoffs. "Everyone's anxious."

Andrew Z. Chen, a software engineer based in New York City, said he's not personally too concerned about his job security — no one on his team was affected — but the January layoffs were still felt. He had scheduled a company book club on the day of the layoffs, and one employee who had RSVP'd was laid off.

"Most of the book discussion turned into a discussion about the layoffs," he said.

For many, navigating the company's recent changes has meant accepting a degree of uncertainty.

"I think many employees have adopted a more pragmatic mindset," said Sarthak Gupta, a data scientist in Seattle, "focusing on delivering impact and doing their best work, while accepting that some factors are outside individual control."

Return to office policies are playing out unevenly

Amazon moved to a three-day office policy in 2023, followed by a five-day policy in January 2025. In December, the company rolled out a dashboard to help managers track office attendance.

An Amazon employee in his 20s who works out of the company's Seattle headquarters said that between his hour-long commute and being asked to stay late at the office more frequently, he has had less time and energy for activities outside of work.

"Man, am I more burned out than I've ever been in my life," he said.

The employee said he is now actively looking for more flexible roles outside Amazon — though he knows those opportunities, at least within Big Tech, are limited in a tough job market.

A product manager based in Los Angeles who was laid off from Amazon last October said that while some employees had flexibility to work from home in certain circumstances, his manager strictly enforced the company's five-day office policy.

For Gupta, the shift back to the office has worked in his favor — he lives about a seven-minute walk from the office. He pays around $2,700 a month, including parking, for his one-bedroom apartment, and said that while there were cheaper options farther away, being close was worth it.

"The short commute has allowed me to focus on building my career instead of feeling drained from getting to and from work," Gupta said.

AI is reshaping how employees do their jobs

Chen said he has been encouraged to use AI tools but hasn't been required to do so. For him, AI has become the most efficient way to get work done — even if it can feel "soul-sucking" at times.

"I spend most of my time talking to AI agents," said Chen. "I can't really imagine going through a day at Amazon without using AI at this point."

Under CEO Andy Jassy, Amazon has made multibillion-dollar investments in Anthropic and OpenAI, and plans to spend up to $200 billion on its AI buildout this year. Last year, Jassy said he expected efficiency gains from AI to eventually "reduce" the size of the company's corporate workforce. Some employees are now evaluated, in part, by how frequently they use AI tools.

The LA-based former product manager said he saw significant productivity gains for software engineers, but more of a "mixed bag" for other roles, like his own. While AI helped with tasks like writing, he said outputs were not always sufficiently reviewed, resulting in occasional errors across documents, emails, and Slack messages.

He said AI became a frequent topic of conversation at work, and that many colleagues shared concerns about facing scrutiny or falling behind professionally if they didn't use the tools — a dynamic that shaped how they approached AI.

"It was fear of irrelevance that was causing most adoption, rather than excitement for technological progress," he said.

Jane Zhang contributed to reporting.