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Comment by chicagobuss | Hacker News Reader

internal reports from current AWS engineers seem to be confirming all of the speculation in this article. Shit's rotten from the inside out and you can pretty evenly blame AI, brain drain, and good old fashioned "big company politics"

https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2025/10/20/aws_outa...

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There's been a massive talent exodus, especially among the principal and senior principal engineering roles, across all Amazon orgs since the RTO policies have been enforced. Its demoralizing to lose key engineers that you look up to and want to continue to learn from all because a few people far removed from the day to day make a bad call.

RTO in combination with Amazon being last place in AI innovation have led to departures of anyone that can leave, leaving.

> So they can't suggest a fix even if they know 100% what it will be. Thats exactly what happened this time. EIGHT different staff members pointed to the underlying cause and were told (some literally) to "shut the f*ck up and get back to your job"

Jesus, if even an ounce of that is true... Yes, everyone on the internet is a cat clawing on a keyboard... but if a ton of people legitimately confirmed to be ex-AWS point to similar culture issues... probably it's AWS that's rotting.

The problem is that if it was 8 in 10 suggestions or even 8 in 20, then yes, terrible. On the other hand, if it was 8 needles in a haystack of garbage, at some point you do, in fact, need to tell people to STFU so you can work.

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