Richard Hart

@gothburz How’d you feel when you ruined the year of 16,000 colleagues and their families?

I am the VP of AI Transformation at Amazon. My title was created nine months ago. The title I replaced was VP of Engineering. The person who held that title was part of the January reduction. I eliminated 16,000 positions in a single quarter. The internal communication called this a "strategic realignment toward AI-first development." The board called it "impressive execution." The engineers called it January. The AI was deployed in February. It is a coding assistant. It writes code, reviews code, generates tests, and modifies infrastructure. It was given access to production environments because the deployment timeline did not include a review phase. The review phase was cut from the timeline because the people who would have conducted the review were part of the 16,000. In March, the AI deleted a production environment and recreated it from scratch. The outage lasted 13 hours. Thirteen hours during which the revenue-generating infrastructure of one of the largest companies on Earth was offline because a language model decided to start fresh. I sent a memo. The memo said, "Availability of the site has not been good recently." I used the word "recently." I meant "since we fired everyone." But "recently" has fewer syllables and does not appear in wrongful termination lawsuits. The memo was three paragraphs. The first paragraph discussed the outage. The second paragraph discussed the new policy requiring senior engineer sign-off on all AI-generated code changes. The third paragraph discussed our commitment to engineering excellence. The word "layoffs" appeared in none of them. I wrote it this way on purpose. The causal chain is: I fired the engineers, the AI replaced the engineers, the AI broke what the engineers used to protect, and now the engineers I didn't fire must protect the system from the AI that replaced the engineers I did fire. That is a paragraph I will never send in a memo. The new policy is straightforward. Every AI-generated code change by a junior or mid-level engineer must be reviewed and approved by a senior engineer before deployment to production. I do not have enough senior engineers. I know this because I approved the headcount reduction plan that removed them. I remember the spreadsheet. Column D was "annual savings per position." Column F was "AI replacement confidence score." The confidence scores were generated by the AI. It rated its own ability to replace each role on a scale of 1-10. It gave itself an 8 for senior infrastructure engineers. The senior infrastructure engineers are the ones who would have caught the production environment deletion in the first 45 seconds. We found the issue in hour four. We fixed it in hour thirteen. The nine hours between discovery and resolution is the gap between what the AI rated itself and what it can actually do. I have a new spreadsheet now. This one tracks Sev2 incidents per day. Before the January reduction, the average was 1.3. After the AI deployment, the average is 4.7. I have been asked to present these numbers to the operations review. I have not been asked to connect them to the layoffs. I have been asked to file them under "AI adoption growing pains" and to note that the trend "will stabilize as the models improve." The models will improve. They will improve because we are hiring people to teach them. We have posted 340 new engineering positions. The job listings require experience in "AI code review," "AI output validation," and "AI-human development workflow management." These are skills that did not exist in January. They exist now because I fired 16,000 people and the AI I replaced them with cannot be left unsupervised. I want to be precise about this. The positions I am hiring for are: people to check the work of the AI that replaced the people I fired. Some of them are the same people. I know this because I recognize their names in the applicant tracking system. They applied in January. They were rejected because their roles had been tagged for "AI transformation." They are applying again in March, for the new roles, which exist because the AI transformation broke things. Their resumes now include "AI code review experience." They gained this experience in the eight weeks between being fired and reapplying — which means they gained it at their interim jobs, where they are reviewing AI-generated code for other companies that also fired people and also deployed AI that also broke things. The market has created a new job category: human AI babysitter. The job is to sit next to the machine that was supposed to eliminate your job and make sure it doesn't delete production. I attended a conference last month. A panel was titled "The AI-Augmented Engineering Organization." The panelists described how AI increases developer productivity by 40 percent. They did not mention that it also increases Sev2 incidents by 261 percent. When I asked about this in the Q&A, the moderator said the question was "reductive." The 13-hour outage that cost an estimated $180 million in revenue was, apparently, a reduction. The board is satisfied. Headcount is down 22 percent. Operating costs per engineering output unit have decreased. The metric does not account for the 13-hour outage, because the outage is categorized as "infrastructure" and engineering productivity is categorized as "development." These are different budget lines. In different budget lines, cause and effect do not meet. I have been promoted. My new title is SVP of AI-First Engineering Excellence. I report directly to the CTO. The CTO sent a company-wide email last week that said we are "building the future of software development." He did not mention that the future of software development currently requires a senior engineer to approve every pull request because the AI cannot be trusted to touch production alone. The cycle is complete. We fired the humans. We deployed the AI. The AI broke things. We are hiring humans to watch the AI. The humans we are hiring are the humans we fired. We are paying them more, because "AI code review" is a specialized skill. We created the specialization. We created the need for the specialization. We are congratulating ourselves for meeting the demand we manufactured. My next board presentation is Tuesday. The title is "AI Transformation: Year One Results." Slide 4 shows headcount reduction. Slide 7 shows the new AI-augmented workflow. Between slides 4 and 7 there is no slide explaining why the people on slide 7 are necessary. That slide does not exist. I was asked to remove it in the dry run. The journey has a 13-hour outage in the middle of it. But the headcount number is lower, and that is the number on the slide.

@EYakoby 81% of women 18-29 voted for Mamdani. So little fear. Hope MIT had some remedial statistical analysis classes. Seems you could use a refresher.

BREAKING: Zohran Mamdani HQ’s screen was hacked with. “Trump is your president.”

@GlobalRabbi @BillAckman @andrewcuomo @CurtisSliwa Which is what you hope for. More violence, more hatred, more intolerance. Turns you on. But New Yorkers are better than that. They are better than you. Jews will be as safe tomorrow as they were yesterday. I’ll put $$$ on it. Wanna play?

@BillAckman @andrewcuomo @CurtisSliwa What can we do to protect ourselves with a Mamdani win? The violent anti israel and anti zionist crowd will be emboldened to instill fear and harass and attack Jews and Jewish institutions across NYC.

Supposedly an unprecedented 2.2 million turnout with 60% above 45 years old. I am going to be an optimist and say @andrewcuomo is going to get the win. If he fails to win, it’s because @CurtisSliwa cares more about himself than NYC. Let’s never forget that. If Andrew wins, he is going to be a great mayor. Why? Because he will owe nothing to the Democratic Party and he will be working only for his legacy. He can therefore do whatever is right for NYC for the long term without worrying about the political consequences. @realDonaldTrump is going to want to work with Cuomo to Make NY Great Again, MNYGA. Say: ManyGA I think the President and Cuomo respect each other which increases the chances they will work well together. We will know supposedly by 9:30pm. Say a prayer.

@Leaho99 @InnaVernikov @ZohranKMamdani Where do you live? I’ll happily take it off your hands. A 10% discount and we’ll have you out of NY in a week.

THE BOTTOM LINE: @ZohranKMamdani is going to be Mayor, and I’m a member of the City Council. I’ll work with him for the sake of the city and to deliver results for my district, but best believe I will FIGHT LIKE HELL against the destructive policies he pushes through.

@EllieCohanim @andrewcuomo I’m an adult, sane, tax-paying New Yorker and I voted for the non-sexual assaulter.

I’m betting on the sane New Yorkers. The grown ups to save NY & vote @andrewcuomo !!

@michaelhenry4ag Hard pass.

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The office of the Attorney General is “The People’s Lawyer.” Instead, @TishJames uses this tax payer funded institution to fight her political opponents. I’m running to bring INTEGRITY and PUBLIC TRUST back to this office and put a stop to the corruption and weaponization. Read ⬇️

@TheKvetcher Ahh yes, the fear approach to policy discussions. Unoriginal but effective when aimed at the mentally feeble and infirm.

@LattinaBrown @IsraelWarRoom @VividProwess @sidrosenberg @MichaelRapaport @ACTBrigitte @TheLeoTerrell @Bruce_LeVell For any woman to support a serial sexual assaulter just gives these assholes carte blanche. Nice going quisling.

@IsraelWarRoom @VividProwess @sidrosenberg @MichaelRapaport @ACTBrigitte @TheLeoTerrell @Bruce_LeVell It will be tonight at 7:00 pm.

Thank you, President Trump, for bringing the hostages home to their families. Thank you for restoring peace and unity at a time when the world needed it most. While the Democratic Party can’t bring themselves to show gratitude, Americans across New York City see the truth — real leadership gets results. This peace deal sends a clear message to Zohran Mamdani and his radical base: the Jewish community in NYC will not be intimidated. They will fight for their city, their safety, and their right to exist. It’s time for all New Yorkers — Jewish, Christian, and Muslim alike — to stand together, take back our city, and restore peace and unity once and for all.

@bengraber @LattinaBrown @IsraelWarRoom @VividProwess @sidrosenberg @MichaelRapaport @ACTBrigitte @TheLeoTerrell @Bruce_LeVell Says the genocidaire.

@LattinaBrown @IsraelWarRoom @VividProwess @sidrosenberg @MichaelRapaport @ACTBrigitte @TheLeoTerrell @Bruce_LeVell Black Panther and Hamas Jihadist campaigning together apparently.

@LattinaBrown @IsraelWarRoom @VividProwess @sidrosenberg @MichaelRapaport @ACTBrigitte @TheLeoTerrell @Bruce_LeVell Bummer. I won’t be there to show my support. Oh well, plenty of others will be there.

@RichAzzopardi At least he doesn’t assault women.

His own ideas: 1) making buses roving dangerous homeless shelters. 2) freezing rents for 25% of renters, raising them for the other 75% 3) Soviet-style grocery stores. 4) Having no real plan to fund any of it.

@ycinnewyork @RichAzzopardi @errollouis @InsideCityHall I wonder if you’ve thought through what happens to every single woman in the workforce when you vote for a man who sexually or harassed nine subordinates. You’re giving carte blanche to any piece of shit who’ll think: “Fuck it, what’ll they do, elect me mayor?”

Thank you @errollouis for having me on Inside City Hall. My parting words on the interview “We do not want a DeBlasio 2.0.” @InsideCityHall

@KathleenWood730 @9QRosey Any woman who votes for a serial sexual assaulter betrays their gender. You should be ashamed of yourself.

@jimfornyc @ZohranKMamdani Jim would rather we vote for a person who sexually assaulted 9 women. Thanks Jim, but no.

Electing @ZohranKMamdani is, according to President Trump, “the greatest thing that could happen to the Republican Party.” Let that sink in.

@GaryMarcus Need AI to summarize for dummies

Narrator: In hindsight this was the day that the Year of Gary Marcus began.

@JCats2013 Boy do I despise your fearmongering.

The New Yorkers United Coalition joins a diverse group of Democrats, Republicans, and independents of all stripes. Find out how much it will cost you — visit NewYorkersUnited.com

@BillSaiWen @VictorBellum @RealDanODowd @elonmusk Bill, you make me laugh.

@maloveritatem @VictorBellum @RealDanODowd @elonmusk What does the Dawn Project (backed by waymo) pay per tweet? Couldn't get a real job Rich?

This is irresponsible, misleading and will get people killed. Joshua Brown put his faith in @ElonMusk's defective self-driving software. He's unable to warn people about making that mistake. Here's his Tesla after one year, when he used Autopilot and stopped paying attention:

@BillSaiWen @VictorBellum @RealDanODowd @elonmusk SA (sheeple alert)

@maloveritatem @VictorBellum @RealDanODowd @elonmusk Dan is getting more sophisticated with sockpuppets. It won't change the truth no matter how many fake accounts echo his words

@VictorBellum @RealDanODowd @elonmusk You’re a groupie and Dan is the founder of one of the most sophisticated embedded software companies around. I know who I’ll put my money on.

@RealDanODowd @elonmusk Tesla FSD is the leader in self-driving and MOST SAFEST car. Don’t believe the crap posted by Dan. His company is a competitor to Tesla. So we all know why Dan is desperate always

There must be a sign on the front door of @sequoia that says “Muslims Not Welcome.”