Career development tips from Amazon’ s Senior Vice President of People Experience, Beth Galetti
Amazon plans to invest US $ 200bn in 2026 alone. The capital was announced during the firm’ s Q4 2025 Earnings Call in February and is primarily flowing into AWS to meet what CEO Andy Jassy describes as“ almost unlimited demand” for AI infrastructure.
However, this high-tech expansion comes at a significant human cost. Since late 2025, Amazon has eliminated approximately 30,000 corporate roles, including a fresh round of 16,000 cuts in early 2026. While the financial trade-off is clear, leadership frames the move as a cultural necessity.
Beth Galetti, Amazon’ s Senior Vice President of People Experience, emphasised in January that the restructuring is about“ speed and innovation” in a fast-changing world.
In a memo to staff, she argued that removing layers of bureaucracy is the only way to maintain the agility required to lead in the AI era, even if that agility comes at the cost of thousands of corporate careers.
Interestingly, while corporate offices are shrinking, the company’ s 1.5 million warehouse workers remain largely unaffected for now, as the current wave of AI automation is specifically designed to replace cognitive, white-collar tasks rather than complex physical labour.
102 May 2026