When AI Talent War cleans up Silicon Valley, Amazon is mostly sitting on the sidelines. Confidential internal documents, as well as accounts from people familiar with the issue, reveal why.
The company has flagged its own wage structure, slowing down the reputation of AI and flagging strict office rules as a major hurdle. Today, the tech giant is being pushed to rethink its recruitment strategy to scramble to compete for top talent.
This document was written since late last year by the HR team covering Amazon's non-retail businesses, including Amazon Web Services, Advertising, Devices, Entertainment and the newly established artificial general information team.
“Genai employment faces challenges such as location, compensation and Amazon's perceived delays,” the document states. “Competers often offer more comprehensive and aggressive packages.” Business Insider has obtained a copy of the document.
Amazon's recent absence from flashy AI Hires highlights these concerns. Meta has drawn high-profile talent from Scaleai, Apple and Openai. Google and Openai continue to be the best destinations for AI professionals, and Microsoft is even drafting a wish list of Meta AI employees who want to hire.
An Amazon spokesman initially told BI: “The company continues to “adapt its approach to becoming more competitive, maintaining both its compensation package and its work arrangements to attract and retain the best AI talent in this dynamic market.”
Hours later, the spokesman updated the statement, saying the story's premise was “wrong.”
“We continue to attract and maintain the best people in the world, and they build and deploy genai applications with quick clips. Our compensation is competitive, but we also want missionaries who are passionate about making meaningful differences for their customers.
Door desk and “egalitarian” payments
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon in the 1990s TNS/ABACA via Reuters Connect
Amazon is the famous frugal. One of its origin stories tells how the company bought cheap doors from Home Depot and hacked them together as an office desk. This guided Amazon's careful spending, and founder Jeff Bezos still uses door desks today.
This penny pinch culture was smashed straight into the AI employment battle, supported by unprecedented spending, putting Amazon in a tricky situation.
In the internal document, compensation is described as one of the “hotly discussed topics” among Amazon recruiters, citing the strict use of fixed pay bands for each role. Amazon's “Egalitarian Philosophy” on “Egalitarian Philosophy” leaves the offer “as follows” compared to its top rivals.
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“The lack of pay ranges for several major employed families over the past few years has not positioned Amazon as the employer chosen as the top tech talent,” the document warned.
For Amazon, missing out on AI talent is a potential risk. The pool of top AI researchers and engineers is limited, and without experts with deep know-how, it is difficult to compete in the field frontiers. In fact, Amazon has made progress in Bedrock AI Cloud Service, but has yet to find any hit AI products like Openai's ChatGpt and Anthropic's Claude.
Amazon's wage structure has been a source of tension for many years.
Several people who spoke with Business Insider cited Amazon Robotics VP Brad Porter's 2020 departure as evidence of the company's modest approach to hindering talent recruitment and retention. Porter partially left after Amazon refused to raise his pay band.
Amazon's stock vesting schedule is also backloaded significantly, a structure that is not appealing to new hires. This policy also extends to top executives who generally do not receive cash bonuses.
“Voting with their feet”
Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO Reuters/Brendan McDermid
In addition to highlighting Amazon's “perceived delays in the AI space,” internal documents stated that generative AI has further strengthened competition with individuals with specialized talent, particularly those with extensive language model expertise.
An August report from Venture Capital Firm Signalfire shows that Amazon is at the bottom edge of engineering retention, far below Meta, Openai and humanity. Jarod Reyes, head of Signalfire's developer community, told Business Insider that Amazon's rival is AI, making greater progress beyond open models, basic research and developer tools.
“Amazon does not clearly position itself as the leader of the wave of generative AI,” Reyes said. “The engineers are paying attention and they vote on their own feet.”
SignalFire Chart for Retaining Engineering Human Resources SignalFire
Some investors share their views. In Amazon's revenue call last month, Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak feared that Wall Street's “Now That Aws is behind” in AI and CEO Andy Jassy on Wall Street's “Noreative” would lose market share to his rivals. Jassy's response remained flat, with Amazon stocks falling during the call.
Amazon intends to address these concerns. According to the document, the company will improve its “compensation and location strategy” and host more events designed to highlight generative AI capabilities. We also plan to set up dedicated recruitment teams for generation AI within business units such as AWS to increase efficiency.
“Hub” constrains talent
Hundreds of tech workers gathered outside Amazon's headquarters in Seattle. Reuters/Lindsay Wasson
Another point of competition is the mission of Amazon's aggressive office appointments, which has already caused logistical issues.
According to internal documents, the company's new “hub” policy further limits access to “high-demand talent like people with Genai skills” by requiring employees to move to a central office or risk termination.
“The hub limits market availability,” he said.
Amazon is looking for ways to enable a more “local inflexible” role, the document added.
Amazon is not entirely on the sidelines. Last year, it attracted Adept CEO David Luan as part of its licensing agreement with an AI startup. Luang is currently heading Amazon's AI Agent Lab. However, the company has also seen departures that include senior AI leaders, including chip designer Rami Shinno and VP Vasi Filomin, who worked on Bedrock.
An Amazon recruiter told Business Insider that it began reducing offers last year due to the company's RTO policy. Even when competitors pay less, people are open to getting jobs if they can stay far away, the person said.
“We're losing out on talent,” the person added.
In fact, Bloomberg recently reported that Oracle has hired more than 600 Amazon employees over the past two years, as Amazon's strict RTO policy made poaching easier.
Maintain the course
An internal Amazon document goes back to the end of last year, revealing the possibility that the company may have adjusted its compensation approach to make an exception to the talent of top AI.
Still, several people familiar with the situation told Business Insider there was no official update to internal pay guidelines. Today's Amazon Manager said it's almost impossible for a company to enact drastic changes given its long track record of sticking to existing systems. People who spoke to Business Insider asked not to identify that they would not discuss sensitive issues.
“There is more risk than the potential benefits of changing the approach that has been very successful for shareholders over the past decades based on how we operate our business and what we have achieved,” Amazon wrote this year about the annual proxy enforcement fee.
Of course, AI talent wars can become an expensive and misguided strategy due to hype and investor overabsorption.
Some of the famous recruit metas that have been seduced recently have already set out.
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