- Amazon engineers railed at their employer for conducting mass layoffs while committing to spend $200 billion this year on AI infrastructure, including data centers.
- The engineers spoke at a Seattle City Council meeting, where officials unanimously passed a proposal to limit new mega data center developments for one year.
- Amazon has laid off more than 30,000 corporate employees since October.
A group of
Amazon engineers appeared at Seattle City Council hearings on Wednesday to throw their support behind efforts to regulate the development of giant AI data centers in the area, which are getting constructed while their employer is engaged in mass layoffs.
"It's been reported that this year, Amazon is spending $200 billion dollars on capital, with most of it going to data centers and AI," Patrick Schloesser, a software engineer at Amazon Web Services, said at a hearing. "Microsoft is spending $190 billion. Meanwhile, the leaders at my company have
laid off 30,000 corporate employees in the last eight months. What that tells me is that Big Tech is desperate to build as much compute capacity as it can, as fast as it can."
Representatives from Amazon didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Officials in Seattle voted to approve a one-year moratorium on new large-scale artificial intelligence data centers to allow time for the city to regulate the projects. The proposal came after four developers approached a local utility provider to pitch building five large scale facilities in Seattle. Two of those developers have since withdrawn their proposals following public outcry, the
Seattle Times reported.
Seattle joins a growing list of cities and counties that are seeking to place limits on the explosive growth of AI data centers. According to the
National Conference of State Legislatures, 14 states are considering legislation that would pause or ban new data centers. A report from Data Center Watch found that in 2025, at least $156 billion in data center projects were blocked or delayed amid local opposition and litigation.
Tech's hyperscalers are showing no signs of slowing down.
Amazon,
Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet, and Meta have committed roughly $700 billion this year to capital expenditures, mostly for AI infrastructure. At the same time, the tech giants and others in the industry are looking for ways to cut costs, including through layoffs.
The 30,000 corporate job cuts at Amazon that Schloesser cited have all come since October, part of an attempt by CEO Andy Jassy to remove layers and slash bureaucracy so the company can operate like what he calls the "world's largest startup."
Schloesser, who has worked at Amazon for nearly six years, urged Seattle officials to require data center developers to commit to using renewable energy to power facilities and no longer use
non-disclosure agreements or shell companies when announcing new projects.
"You've got to provide good jobs building these things, and you've got to pay a new tax that funds city jobs every time you conduct a large layoff," Schloesser said.
Schloesser and the two other Amazon engineers who spoke at the hearings, Liesl Wigand and Darius Irani, are part of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice. The group of current and former Amazon workers has repeatedly pressed the e-retailer on its
climate stance, treatment of its workforce and other issues.
In November, the group
penned a letter to Amazon executives calling on the company to establish a "more responsible rollout of AI," and "get real about the costs of AI and the guardrails we need."
Wigand, who has worked for Amazon for more than 12 years, characterized Amazon's push to embrace the technology 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 buildout."
The one-year moratorium was approved unanimously by the council's Land Use and Sustainability Committee on Wednesday.
WATCH:
OpenAI deepens Amazon ties
<small>Source: CNBC</small>
Business
Amazon engineers in Seattle slam employer for building AI data centers while laying off 30,000 staffers
CNBC
June 04, 2026
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