Last year, Garman said replacing junior software developers with AI was “one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard,” and said that’s a point he supports. In an interview with wiredGarman said replacing junior engineers and employees with new technology is bad business practice.
He noted that because entry-level employees are typically paid the lowest, it is not a cost-effective strategy to eliminate their positions first in favor of higher-paid senior talent. Additionally, these fresh young workers are likely to be recent graduates who are energetic, excited, and familiar with AI tools. In Garman’s eyes, eliminating them would be short-sighted.
“At some point, everything just explodes on its own,” Garman said. “If you don’t have a talent pipeline that you’re building and you don’t have juniors that you’re mentoring and developing through your company, that’s often where the best ideas come from.”
“You have to think long-term about the health of your company,” he added. “So just saying, ‘Okay, we’re not going to hire any more juniors’ is just the starting point for someone who’s trying to build a long-term company.”
In the episode, platformer In a podcast released this week, Garman said Amazon plans to hire 11,000 interns and new graduates in 2026. Despite advances in AI coding tools, the tech giant now has more software developers than it did two years ago.
Data so far paints a murky picture of how AI will impact work more broadly. A Stanford University study published last August suggests that AI is already starting to penetrate entry-level workers. The study found that the “AI revolution” is “having a significant and disproportionate impact on entry-level workers in the U.S. labor market, particularly software engineers and customer service agents between the ages of 22 and 25.”
But while the unemployment rate for recent college graduates is around 5.6%, higher than the general unemployment rate of 4.2%, this gap emerged six months before the release of ChatGPT in November 2022 and has not widened significantly since then, leading economists like Apollo’s Torsten Slok to attribute youth job struggles to broader economic factors rather than AI.
What is Amazon workforce renewal?
Despite Garman’s claims that Amazon is hiring young talent, the company laid off thousands of workers last fall and in January of this year, while also advancing its own automation. The tech giant announced last October that it would cut 14,000 jobs, mostly middle management. Early last year, Amazon laid off some employees from its AWS, podcast division Wonderly, and consumer devices division.
Rather than blaming AI for the layoffs, Amazon said the layoffs are part of an effort to make its business more efficient and resolve cultural misalignments in its workforce after a period of growth.
CEO Andy Jassy said at the time: “The announcement we made a few days ago is not really financially driven, and it’s not really AI driven, at least not at this point.” “It’s a culture.”
Still, advances in AI are about to impact Amazon’s employees. A memo outlining fall headcount reductions cited AI transformational technology as a driver for leaner teams and improved workflows. A memo released by the company in June 2025 states that improved AI efficiency will “reduce a company’s total workforce.” new york times Amazon has a lofty goal of automating 75% of its operations, which would mean about 600,000 jobs the tech giant ultimately doesn’t need to hire, according to research published in October.
How AI will transform the workforce
Garman is not indifferent to the potential workplace upheaval that AI could bring about, but he also rejects the devastating impact it will have on the future of work as the use of the technology proliferates. in platformer In the podcast, Garman argued that while AI will change the shape of work, it won’t completely eliminate the need for AI. Transformation will require new jobs, and while some jobs may change, we need jobs to keep the economy moving.
“If you believe that half of the jobs are going to disappear, the whole economy will collapse on its own,” he says. “Everything will disappear. Once the AI is gone, you’ll have to go back to other jobs at some point. The math doesn’t add up.”
Rather, the future of technology jobs amid the AI boom may reflect the adoption of Microsoft Excel. This eliminated the need for employees to do manual calculations and encouraged other employees to adapt and learn new tools.
“I think half of the white-collar jobs may change, but there’s a difference between a sweep and a change,” Garman said.
A version of this article was published on Fortune.com on December 16, 2025.
