More likely their hamfisted return to work layoff scheme has caused them to bleed experienced staff. The only people left are less experienced and give less of a shit. It took them over an hour to release the database of their DNS system was the issue.
Amazon Allegedly Replaced 40% of AWS DevOps With AI Days Before Crash
Submitted 2 weeks ago by mesamunefire@piefed.social to technology@lemmy.world
https://80.lv/articles/amazon-allegedly-replaced-40-of-aws-devops-workers-with-ai-days-before-crash
Comments
roofuskit@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Hasherm0n@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I asked a buddy that works at Amazon about the outage and he pointed me to this article.
theregister.com/…/aws_outage_amazon_brain_drain_c…
I know quite a few people who currently work there and pretty much all of them are trying to leave.
davidagain@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
This is a really good article. Thanks for posting it.
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I wonder how long AI will function when it starts feeding on AI generated junk data. Like a photocopy of a photocopy.
reddig33@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
This report is a blog linking to a blog.
mesamunefire@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Thanks I didnt see that. Ill add it to the description.
cley_faye@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I really want this to be true, because not only I believe that would be the immediate outcome, but also because it would be hilarious.
But a somewhat credible source that’s not wrapped in “allegedly” and old stories would really help drive the point home.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
I know there’s doubt as to the validity of the claims. I only want to say this: when “AI” takes jobs, who is there to plug things in to make the “AI” machine go?
Sounds like Amazon fucked around and found out… Allegedly.
AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
A handful of senior engineers or developers. And then we’re even more ducked when they retire or die, because the no-one is hiring junior engineers or developers
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The good ones leave as things turn to shit, or we’re laid off because their salaries were too high.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
mcv@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
What a great idea to test this on paying customers’ live production websites.
qarbone@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’d believe them if they said they tested small- scale locally. Even good software/designs can implode when they get scaled up, and I doubt this was good design or software.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Absolute fucking MORONS have taken over the world, and are wrecking it.
IF we ever get our country back, we have to go forward with a national strategy that we no longer have to be polite to treasonous MAGA scumbags. Everytime they open their mouths they should be shouted down with screams to shut the fuck up.
We should never have to tolerate the opinions of stupid, violent traitors.
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
They’ll all pretend they were never MAGA, why are you still going on about Trump, we’re trying to look forward, etc.
This is exactly how the GOP disowned the Bush II Administration with the Tea Party.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
And that’s when we have to scream the loudest, and absolutely refuse to give their gaslighting any credibility at all. If you were a Republican during this era, then you are a MAGA Traitor, racist, rapist, incompetent, intolerant, violent, stupid, pedophile.
And you ALWAYS will be, forever.
halloween_spookster@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
MBAs are mortal enemies of software engineers. Couple that with what one former CEO of mine said: “engineers have very well tuned bullshit detectors” and you arrive at the problem…
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
This happens with any disruptive tech. In the 80s, Old white CEOs were computerizing everything without understanding computers. 2025 every grey CEO throws around A1 without having the first clue how it works.
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
throws around A1 without having the first clue how it works.
Just open the bottle and pour it on your well-done steak?
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
We can send them to work camps like during the Depression.
Jumbie@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I’m already there. I don’t hide my revulsion.
just_another_person@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
DevOps cannot be automated away. So stupid.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 2 weeks ago
Dev Ops is one of the most automated parts of software development and deployment actually.
just_another_person@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
…noooooo, it most definitely isn’t.
While the job does deal heavily in automating things, it only automated Boolean things. Looking at a platform and seeing why and where it’s failing is not a Boolean thing, and never will be. It’s the same reason we still don’t have machines that repair cars over 100 years after their introduction.
cley_faye@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Automation with a lot of validation steps that are not very obvious. Because if they were, we’d have automated them away.
kcuf@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Devops is often figuring out why automation didn’t work.
Amir@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Tried to figure out yesterday why a user couldn’t ssh into a server, tried LLMs to figure it out, completely useless. Had to go into some log file somewhere to find out the one who set up the server made a specific group for ssh and if a user wasn’t in that group they couldn’t connect. The LLMs (ChatGPT and Gemini) gave me bullshit about changing flags in the sshd config…
squaresinger@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
DevOps is not executing the automation, but designing it. DevOps is not manually spinning up pods but writing the automation that does so.
sabin@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Most of my work in DevOps isn’t in front of my text editor writing scripts. It’s spent hopping between dashboards, drafting emails, doing RCA, teaching dev team members how to use pipelines, and getting requirements from them for designing new pipelines. Then inevitably debating with them about design considerations when they ask for a set of procedures that won’t pan out.
Until your AI is a fully fledged team member who everyone can feel comfortable engaging with as if they were a real human, you cannot possibly begin to automate this.
hamid@crazypeople.online 2 weeks ago
Ah yes trustworthy source 80.lv
Look into this source for like 2 seconds, it is a marketing research company, not journalists, with extremely suspicious and likely generated team. 80.lv/contact-us#audience my.linkedin.com/in/arti-sergeev the “Head” of 80 level doesn’t even seem like a real person, definitely not a real picture.
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
So you’re saying the 80.lv “team” are AI generated? Wouldn’t that be ironic…AI making shit up about AI.
balance8873@lemmy.myserv.one 2 weeks ago
Uhh, why do you say that’s not a real pic?
hamid@crazypeople.online 2 weeks ago
Literally everything about that site is generated. It is possible it is the real picture of a Russian guy who went to online school that lives in Malaysia but considering that all the articles, all the stock photos look generated, I’m going to assume the faces are too.
AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
I doubt it. Even the article claims that there’s been no news about layoffs since July. No mentions from laid off engineers online either.
prime_number_314159@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Days before the Queen of England died, the Roman Empire collapsed. Coincidence? (Literally no, but I sure could speculate).
bitjunkie@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The execs started buying into their own bullshit…
neuromorph@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
“the only winning move is not to play”
BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Amazon has laid off or scared off the vast majority of their most experienced people. Those that weren’t laid off quit over stupidity like “RTO”. I don’t doubt that their underpaid junior staff and Kool-Aid drinking upper management decided that AI is a great way to replace all the lost knowledge and expertise. As with the downfall of civilization, this will get much worse before it gets better. It will be interesting to see how huge companies react to another companies enshittification actively damaging their business and reputation.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
amazon also is more burned-out heavy than other tech companies, i saw all those reviews and the peoples post on reddit.
Capernaum@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah I don’t trust the source, but I’ve heard a ton of articles saying they’ve been replacing people with AI.
We cannot have the internet be centralized on central hardware with so little oversight.
Dragonstaff@leminal.space 2 weeks ago
The thing is that Amazon needs to get broken up way more than Ma Bell did. Most people have never heard of AWS before, but it’s crazy to have one company own so much of the internet, even before you get into their stranglehold on internet commerce (which also should be broken up).
kokesh@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Why am I not surprised…
Darkcoffee@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
www.cnbc.com/…/ai-amazon-workforce-jassy.html
It’s not tough to see what led to this crash. Occam’s razor is pretty clear on this one.
PumpkinSkink@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’ve been waiting for something like this so we can see who’s heads roll when AI fucks up. I figured we’d see doctors and lawyers losing their licenses first, but maybe it’ll be this. So, who shoulders the blame when a program that can’t learn from its mistakes fucks up a quarter of the internet?
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Is there 404 reporting on this yet?
mudkip@lemdro.id 2 weeks ago
Probably why it crashed then
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I wish they’d replace the executives first.
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’d like to read the stackademic link without signing up.
Kissaki@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Ask an AI to visit and summarize the page for you /s
Lembot_0004@discuss.online 2 weeks ago
TLDR:
report had been published right before the outage, alleging that the company had laid off 40% of its DevOps team to replace them with AI. … there is a lot of skepticism around this article… although we do not claim it is true or is somehow connected to the systems’ crash.
Super-Duper-short-version:
No trustworthy data about the incident.
obinice@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
To be fair, this is 2025, there’s no trustworthy data about anything any more.
Hell, you might just be an AI. Or I might just be an AI. Or maybe there wasn’t even an outage. I didn’t notice any issues, so maybe AI hallucinated it, or it’s been made up as clickbait and been second-hand reported by thousands of news sites that don’t care about fact checking any more.
Not that there are facts any more, anyway.
Cybersteel@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The news could report on a non existent attack on US soul and suddenly trigger world war 2
davidagain@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Amazon is laying off or has lost truly staggering numbers of experienced staff.
So it might not be AI, although my experience with AI suggests it’s right about 60% of the time and there’s no way I would let it implement it’s own recommendations anywhere near anything that earned me money.
It might just be cheaper, younger, newer staff making mistakes they don’t know how to fix.
theregister.com/…/aws_outage_amazon_brain_drain_c…