'Don't fire your juniors': Amazon Cloud Chief on how AI is replacing entry level jobs

As warnings grow louder that artificial intelligence could decimate entry-level jobs, Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman is offering a sharp rebuttal: ditching junior employees for AI isn’t just short-sighted, it’s “one of the dumbest things” companies could do.

Speaking on the Matthew Berman Podcast, Garman argued that young workers are among the cheapest yet most valuable hires in an AI-driven workplace, precisely because they are eager adopters of new tools. “They’re probably the least expensive employees you have. They’re the most leaned into your AI tools,” he said. “How’s that going to work when you go like 10 years in the future and you have no one that has built up or learned anything?”

His remarks land at a time when the tech industry is deeply divided on the fate of entry-level work. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has compared today’s AI systems to junior colleagues, saying many workers are now effectively managing teams of digital “agents.” Google’s chief scientist Jeff Dean predicted AI could soon match the skills of a junior software engineer, perhaps within a year. And Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei went further, warning that half of all entry-level white-collar roles could vanish within five years, with global unemployment potentially jumping by as much as 20%.

The numbers are already showing cracks. Goldman Sachs data indicates that unemployment among 20- to 30-year-olds in tech has risen nearly 3 percentage points since early 2024, over four times the increase in the broader labour market.

Yet Garman isn’t alone in pushing back. GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke has stressed the value of young engineers, pointing out that students and new graduates tend to adopt AI faster and approach it with fewer preconceived limits. “They get it because they are taking this with an open mind,” he said.

For Garman, the real priority is not replacing talent but cultivating it. He urged companies to keep hiring graduates and teaching them fundamentals like software design, problem-solving, and best practices, skills that AI cannot yet replace. For students, he suggested investing in critical thinking, adaptability, and creativity rather than banking on mastery of a single discipline. “If you spend all of your time learning one specific thing… I can promise you that’s not going to be valuable 30 years from now,” he warned.

The clash between AI optimists and sceptics underscores a bigger question: is the rise of generative AI a tool to enhance early careers, or a force that will erase them altogether? For now, the jury is out. But if Garman is right, the smartest companies will keep their doors open to the next generation of talent, even in an age of intelligent machines.