From the perspective of a former employee. I knew that going in though. I was 46 at the time, AWS was my 8th job and knowing AWS’s reputation from 2nd and 3rd hand information, I didn’t even entertain an opportunity that would have forced me to relocate.
I interviewed for a “field by design” role that was “permanently remote” [sic].
But even those positions had an RTO mandate after I already left.
There's an endless series of one pagers with this idea or that idea, but from what I witnessed first hand, the ones that stuck were the ones that made money.
Jassy was a decent guy when I was there, but that was a decade ago. A CEO is a PR machine more than anything else, and the AI hype train has been so strong that if you do anything other than saying AI is the truth, the light and the way, you lose market share to competitors.
AI, much like automation in general, does allow fewer people to do more, but in my experience, customer desires expand to fill a vacuum and if fewer people can do more, they'll want more to the point that they'll keep on hiring more and more people.