AWS Boss Says AI and Office Jobs Won’t Disappear
AWS boss Matt Garman says AI and office jobs will evolve, not vanish, as Amazon keeps hiring thousands of interns and graduates.
Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said AWS Boss Says AI and Office Jobs Won't Disappear, even as some tech leaders warn artificial intelligence could wipe out large numbers of entry-level roles. He made the comments on the Platformer podcast, released Tuesday, and tied his argument to a simple point: companies still need people, and economies still need workers with paychecks.
Garman also said Amazon is still hiring thousands of interns and new graduates this year. That matters. The company is betting that early-career workers remain useful even as AI tools spread faster across offices, software teams and customer operations.
AI will reshape jobs, not erase them
Garman pushed back on the idea that half of office jobs could disappear. He called that kind of forecast dramatic, but not realistic. If that much work vanished, he said, the economy would start breaking down. People would lose income, spending would fall, and the business system would hit itself.
“If you believe that half of jobs are going away, the entire economy would just collapse on itself,” Garman said. “Everything would go away. You wouldn’t have AI, and then at some point you’d have to go back to that other work. The math doesn’t work.”
His comments land in the middle of a louder debate about white-collar work. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned that AI could eliminate up to half of entry-level office jobs. Garman does not buy that scenario. He said AI will change workflows, automate parts of jobs and push workers toward higher-value tasks, but it will not make office work vanish wholesale.
Short answer: no collapse. Just change.
That distinction matters because many companies are already using AI to draft emails, sort support tickets, summarize reports and help write code. Those uses can speed up work and reduce repetitive tasks. They do not automatically remove the need for managers, analysts, sales staff or junior employees who learn how to use the tools.
The Excel analogy and why it matters
To make his point, Garman compared today’s AI wave with the spread of Microsoft Excel years ago. Spreadsheet software changed how offices worked. It reduced the need for some manual calculation jobs. But it did not erase the need for workers. It shifted the job.
Garman sees the same pattern now. Workers who learn quickly and adapt to new tools will be in a stronger position. Those who refuse to learn will struggle more. The technology changes the skill mix. It does not freeze the labor market in place.
For readers in Indonesia, that has a direct edge. Companies here are also chasing automation, from chatbots in customer service to AI tools for internal reporting. If Garman’s view holds, the bigger risk is not instant mass layoffs. It is the slow split between workers who can use AI well and those who get left behind.
That gap could shape pay, promotions and hiring. Office jobs may still exist, but the tasks inside them may look different by the month. Workers who can review AI output, check accuracy and move faster on routine tasks will likely have an advantage. The rest may feel the pressure first.
Amazon is still hiring young talent
Garman said Amazon plans to hire 11,000 interns and new graduates this year. He also said the number of software developers at Amazon is now higher than two years ago, even though AI-powered coding tools have become much more capable.
Amazon told Fortune it remains committed to internships because they help build the next generation of leaders and builders. Garman said young employees often learn faster, adapt to company culture and bring fewer old habits into the workplace.
“They haven’t learned bad habits yet, you can teach them the company culture, they are willing to learn new tools, and they’re among the best employees you can get,” he said.
There is also a longer-term reason behind that hiring logic. If big companies stop bringing in early-career workers, the talent pipeline dries up. A business may save money this year, but it risks having too few experienced leaders later. That concern is one IBM has also raised.
IBM chief human resources officer Nickle LaMoreaux warned that stopping entry-level hiring can leave companies with a gap in three to five years. “If we don’t keep investing in entry-level employees, what happens in three to five years?” she said. “There’s no pipeline; the well runs dry.”
Garman’s own career gives his argument some weight. He joined Amazon in 2005 as an MBA intern while studying at Northwestern University, then spent nearly two decades rising through the cloud business before becoming AWS CEO in 2024. His path started at the bottom, and he is still betting on that model for the next generation.
Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar S has made a similar case, saying his company is hiring 20,000 new graduates in 2025 and expects that number to rise in 2026. Across the tech industry, the message is starting to sound less like panic and more like recalibration. AI will keep moving into office work. Companies are trying to decide how much human talent they still need around it. Amazon’s answer, at least for now, is 11,000 interns and new graduates this year.
