Amazon engineers blasted their employer at a heated Seattle City Council hearing this week, accusing the tech giant of pouring billions into an AI-fueled data center boom while slashing tens of thousands of white-collar jobs.
The criticism came as Seattle officials advanced a one-year moratorium on new large-scale data center developments, citing concerns about power consumption, water use and the strain that AI infrastructure could place on local resources.
“It’s been reported that this year, Amazon is spending $200 billion on capital, with most of it going to data centers and AI,” Patrick Schloesser, a software engineer at Amazon Web Services, told council members on Wednesday.
“Meanwhile, the leaders at my company have laid off 30,000 corporate employees in the last eight months,” Schloesser said. “What that tells me is that Big Tech is desperate to build as much compute capacity as it can, as fast as it can.”
The comments spotlight a growing tension inside Amazon as CEO Andy Jassy pushes an aggressive AI expansion while simultaneously carrying out one of the largest corporate workforce reductions in company history.
Since October, Amazon has cut roughly 30,000 corporate jobs through two major rounds of layoffs as part of Jassy’s effort to flatten management structures and reduce bureaucracy.
The company announced approximately 14,000 corporate job cuts in October and another 16,000 in January.
At the same time, Amazon has committed to spending approximately $200 billion on capital expenditures this year, with the majority earmarked for AI infrastructure and data centers, according to company disclosures cited during the hearing.
The clash between workforce reductions and soaring AI investment has fueled criticism from some employees, particularly members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, an activist group made up of current and former workers.
Schloesser and fellow Amazon engineers Liesl Wigand and Darius Irani appeared before the Seattle City Council’s Land Use and Sustainability Committee to support tighter regulation of data center development.
Wigand, who has worked at Amazon for more than a decade, criticized what she described as an “all-costs-justified AI build-out.”
“The biggest issue is a belief that AI should be how we solve everything, while ignoring the resources that it costs,” Wigand said.
“This culture is omnipresent across tech. That’s why local governments, in collaboration with community stakeholders, should be setting the terms for data center build-out.”
The committee unanimously approved the one-year moratorium on Wednesday.
The proposal emerged after four developers approached Seattle City Light about building five large-scale data centers in the utility’s service territory. Two developers have since withdrawn their plans amid mounting opposition.
The debate has become a flashpoint in Seattle, where elected officials are grappling with how to accommodate exploding demand for AI computing power while addressing concerns over electricity, water consumption and environmental impacts.
Amazon, however, pushed back against suggestions that it is planning a major new data center expansion inside Seattle.
“We respect our colleagues’ right to voice their opinions,” Amazon spokeswoman Margaret Callahan told The Post.
“Currently, we don’t have any plans to construct data centers within the Seattle city limits.”
Callahan added that Amazon remains committed to operating responsibly in communities where it does maintain data centers.
“Across the communities where we do operate data centers, we’re committed to being a responsible neighbor — investing in local economic development while prioritizing water and energy efficiency that exceeds industry standards,” she said.
The company also sought to counter criticisms surrounding water consumption.
According to Amazon, most of its North American data centers do not use water for cooling on a daily basis because outside air provides sufficient cooling for much of the year. The company says it relies on water-based cooling only about 10% of the time across the Americas.
The company also said it is increasingly turning to reclaimed wastewater rather than drinking water supplies.
Amazon says it currently operates 24 facilities that use 100% reclaimed water and has contracts in place for 130 additional sites globally.
Amazon has pledged to become “water positive” by 2030, meaning it would return more water to communities than its data centers consume. The company says it is already 53% of the way toward achieving that goal.
The Post has sought comment from Amazon Employees for Climate Justice.
