Amazon's cloud boss Matt Garman has a warning to business leaders who are in a hurry to trade AI workers. Don't abandon junior employees.
In an episode released Tuesday on an episode of the “Matthew Berman” podcast, Amazon Web Services CEO said replacing entry-level staff with AI tools was “one of the stupidest things I've heard.”
“They are probably the cheapest employees you have. They're the most leaning-in-the-line employees you have,” he said.
“How does it work when you're going like the next decade and you don't have anyone built or learned anything?”
Garman said companies should continue to hire graduates, build software, break down problems and teach them how to adopt best practices.
He also said that the most valuable skills in an AI-driven economy are not tied to one university degree.
“If you spend time learning one particular thing and think, 'That's what I'm going to be an expert for the next 30 years,' you can promise that it's not worth it in 30 years,” he said.
Instead, he said the focus should be on developing important reasoning, creativity, and the ability to adapt as technology evolves.
AWS representatives declined to comment further.
AI is coming for junior employees
Technology leaders have spoken out about how AI can replace the work of entry-level staff.
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Openai CEO Sam Altman said in June that AI is already beginning to act like a junior-level colleague.
“The people talking about their job now are to assign work to a lot of agents, see the quality, figure out how it fits, give feedback, and it sounds like how it works with a team of still relatively young employees.”
Google's chief scientist Jeff Dean said earlier this year that AI could quickly replicate the skills of junior software engineers, adding that it could occur within next year.
Pressure is also shown in the data. According to Goldman Sachs, tech unemployment rates for ages 20-30 have risen by nearly 3 percentage points since early 2024, up four times the overall unemployment rate.
“This is still a small share of the overall US labor market, but we estimate that generative AI will ultimately drive away 6-7% of all US workers,” wrote Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs, in August.
Others disagree that junior staff is a consumable item.
Github CEO Thomas Dohmke said last month that younger engineers often bring fresh perspectives, and that they are likely early adopters of AI.
“Currently, those who go to children in high school, college or early in education can use AI much faster,” Dohmke said in a July episode of “The Pragmatic Engineer.”
“They take this with an open mind so they get it. They don't have, 'This is how we've always done it,'” he added.
