People ask why I decided to leave AWS. This is a company that I have loved working for. I joked that if you cut me, I would have bled orange. I have had the privilege of working with the most intelligent people in my life, and in-turn made amazing relationships that will last for years.
I believe in the cloud, in economies of scale, making customer’s lives easier, and I know that AWS has most of the best products on the market for this. It is a pleasure helping customers use these.
But Amazon is going down a road I simply cannot follow.
My peers commonly believe that we should ignore politics, keep our heads down, focus on our immediate circles of influence, and go on about our day. But recent events in the United States are atrocious, and Amazon is a quintessentially, intractably American company.
This cannot be understated, ignored, or explained away: the corporate response to an American slide into totalitarianism has been to bribe fascist leaders with money, influence, media attention, flattery, dropping critical DEI programs, and “sane washing” events that were once thought unimaginable. Women’s bodily autonomy, squashed by rape-apologists and forced-birth extremists, along with christofascism, and a “white is right” undercurrent to the modern political dialog is normalized.
I am horrified by the lack of morality and spine shown by Amazon. They demonstrate that their vaunted leadership principals mean nothing. Amazon was supposed to be a safe place for women, people of colour, and embracing of varied sexual identities. That is no longer the case.
As a Canadian citizen, I do not have much power to voice my outrage. So, I choose to "vote with my wallet". I have cancelled Prime, stopped all Amazon purchases, ceased all travel to the US, and otherwise am boycotting every American product that I reasonably can. And I can choose which company I work for, if not what their leaders decide. Moreover, I select whom I choose to enrich through my employment, even though my contributions are so insignificant to not even count as a rounding error for such a large enterprise.
Amazon was not dragged into being a fascist collaborator. It ran – it sprinted – at the opportunity to do so. Jeff Bezos’ virtue signaling his "open for business" approach at the White House happened more quickly than most could have anticipated. And this is inexcusable. I cannot remain associated with this brand any further. I feel physically nauseated at the thought of travelling to America again for any purpose, business or personal. The Amazon brand is now toxic, growing worse by the day, and while it may not sink to the depths of the Tesla brand, remaining employed there does not reflect well on me.
A consequence of supporting a radical totalitarian agenda is that Amazon loses people. I am sure when Jeff Bezos and Andy Jassy decided to bribe Trump, Musk, and the other leaders of the radical current regime, they foresaw this as an outcome. But this will cost Amazon far more than expected. Already, European and Asian markets are pivoting away from AWS. I expect a loss of up to 100 billion dollars over the next five to 10 years from customer attrition, lost sales funnel, policy changes that erode cloud-native solutions adoption, and mandates for multi-cloud and on-premises portability. Private sector purchasing will follow in foreign markets as well. Amazon and AWS will become "American only" companies in time. Amazon and AWS’ global efforts are now kneecapped.
Ultimately, shareholders will earn far less than if Bezos and Jassy had simply used Amazon’s massive war chest to stymie Trump’s four-year reign where it would impact the company. This is a lost opportunity that will be studied in business schools for decades to come. Aligning your business with fascists is bad for business. It’s bad for Amazon’s employees, and these decisions alone have destroyed years of hard-won good will from customers that would otherwise have happily trusted AWS with their critical workloads.
For my part, I will work for a Canadian company, with Canadian customers and domestic-aligned interests. I do not want to help "make America great again", or more accurately "make America white again" I am happy to help my own country weather the storm of MAGA fascism with all the tools and means at my disposal.
Sincerely,
An ex-AWS level 7 Bar Raiser