Quoting Terk Terkowitz
Amazon engineering leadership frames AI non-adoption as a finding to document, not a personal failing.
“If your work does not benefit from current AI tooling, that is a finding, not a failing. Document why, share it with your community of peers, bring it to your manager, and work to find solutions. An engineer who can explain where AI does not yet help their work is demonstrating the judgement we are asking for.”
Amazon engineering leadership has updated its official guidelines for software engineers, explicitly framing cases where AI tooling does not help as valuable signal to surface rather than a shortcoming to hide. This is a notable public posture shift: Amazon is mandating engagement with AI tools while simultaneously asking engineers to critically evaluate and report gaps. It signals that big tech is moving past naive AI-maximalism and toward structured feedback loops on real-world AI utility.