When one tech giant’s trash becomes another’s treasure, you get AWS sliding into the DMs of freshly laid-off Meta engineers. Amazon’s cloud division is actively recruiting workers displaced by Meta’s recent job cuts, looking to fill roughly 160 open positions by poaching from its competitor’s talent pool.
AWS Chief Marketing Officer Julia White has urged internal staff to reach out directly to laid-off Meta employees.
The layoff math behind the move
Meta cut approximately 600 positions in its AI unit in October 2025, with additional reductions hitting its Reality Labs division. That’s a meaningful chunk of AI-focused talent suddenly available on the open market.
Amazon, for its part, hasn’t exactly been immune to the downsizing trend. The company carried out broad corporate layoffs affecting around 14,000 workers by late 2025, with estimates suggesting that number could climb to 30,000 across various sectors.
