Amazon's HR Lead Uses AI Tool to Write 100,000 Lines of Code - 25 Years After She Last Coded (aboutamazon.com) 16
In an Amazon News blog post, their HR leader describes using AI to write 100,000 lines of code — 25 years after she last coded. "Do you know how empowering it is to realize that after 25 years away from coding, you can actually build again?" First she built a calendar app for her family, but then used Amazon's AI-powered coding tool Kiro to write an app for Amazon's internal "Everyone Can Build" event.
We opened the competition to every employee on our team, and within just a few weeks, more than 1,500 people were building. I couldn't believe what they built. One employee built an app that turned a nearly four-hour manual process into a one-second automated check, saving tens of thousands of hours annually. Another made a desktop pet named Momo that keeps your tasks, reminders, and shortcuts a click away.
Since then, I've written over 100,000 lines of code with AI. What I've found is that the more you work with these tools, the more natural the process becomes, and the more you realize they're expanding what you're capable of, not replacing it. You don't need perfection to start. You just need to dive in. When I decided to build the submission app for our team competition, I didn't know how to begin, so I asked our internal AI workplace assistant, called Aza. It pointed me to the right tools and helped me take the first step. From there, I opened Kiro and started building. When you give employees the ability and tools to solve problems themselves, they will surprise you with what they create...
At Amazon, every employee has access to AI tools. Whether someone needs a quick answer, wants to move faster in their day-to-day, or is ready to try building something new, the resources are there. The more people use these tools, the more capable they become with them, and that experience carries forward in their careers... We also want to make it easy for people to build credentials that are recognized across industries. That's why AI training is free for every Amazon employee. Amazon covers the full cost of one AWS AI certification exam per year, with options ranging from foundational AI concepts to professional-level generative AI. Employees can choose the path that fits where they are in their learning journey.
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp notes that 7 months ago Galetti also took to Amazon News to announce the elimination of 16,000 corporate jobs, a move which CNBC noted coincided "with a push to invest heavily in artificial intelligence."
The job reductions come just a few months after October's layoffs, when 14,000 employees were let go across Amazon's corporate workforce. At the time, the company indicated the cuts would continue in 2026 as it found "additional places we can remove layers."
Since then, I've written over 100,000 lines of code with AI. What I've found is that the more you work with these tools, the more natural the process becomes, and the more you realize they're expanding what you're capable of, not replacing it. You don't need perfection to start. You just need to dive in. When I decided to build the submission app for our team competition, I didn't know how to begin, so I asked our internal AI workplace assistant, called Aza. It pointed me to the right tools and helped me take the first step. From there, I opened Kiro and started building. When you give employees the ability and tools to solve problems themselves, they will surprise you with what they create...
At Amazon, every employee has access to AI tools. Whether someone needs a quick answer, wants to move faster in their day-to-day, or is ready to try building something new, the resources are there. The more people use these tools, the more capable they become with them, and that experience carries forward in their careers... We also want to make it easy for people to build credentials that are recognized across industries. That's why AI training is free for every Amazon employee. Amazon covers the full cost of one AWS AI certification exam per year, with options ranging from foundational AI concepts to professional-level generative AI. Employees can choose the path that fits where they are in their learning journey.
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp notes that 7 months ago Galetti also took to Amazon News to announce the elimination of 16,000 corporate jobs, a move which CNBC noted coincided "with a push to invest heavily in artificial intelligence."
The job reductions come just a few months after October's layoffs, when 14,000 employees were let go across Amazon's corporate workforce. At the time, the company indicated the cuts would continue in 2026 as it found "additional places we can remove layers."
Pulled Linux from Git;now owning 44m lines of code (Score:2)
I could be an HR Lead as well.
Re: (Score:2)
It is remarkably light on detail. She wrote 100,000 lines...of what? We don't know. She's remarkably detailed when she is listing the products and offerings of Amazon. I now know the product names and branding name for their $1billion education benefit program, and their $2.5 billion child training program.
They're trying to appeal to employees, I can't figure out if they want to appeal to their current employees or hire more employees.
Re: (Score:3)
I think she knows what the word (coding) means. She used to be a software developer. From TFA, in her voice:
I started my career as a software developer in the transportation industry, building package tracking and international systems. Over nearly two decades, I moved into senior leadership, leading transportation businesses as chief information officer before eventually running the full air and ground networks, from engineering to operations.
In 2013, I was interviewing at Amazon for a transportation role when the recruiter threw me a curveball: “What would you think about doing a job in HR?” The interviewers had noticed I lit up when I talked about developing people. So, I took the chance. Today I lead the company's global HR organization as senior vice president of People Experience and Technology.
I "created" BIGNUM lines of assembly (Score:1)
from SMALLNUM lines of C and pre-processor code.
When it works well, AI-generated code is almost* just raising things to a higher level of abstraction.
* if only it were just that. Unfortunately, "vibe coding" gives you unreproducible/non-deterministic output, merely raising to the next level of abstraction should give you consistent output. It would be like compiling C code where your headers and libraries change out from under you unpredictably and with every build.
Re: I "created" BIGNUM lines of assembly (Score:3)
Re:The existence of the database endangers us (Score:1)
thats how you end up with 100000 lines of undocumented unmaintainable code that noone knows how it works and what it does.
Re: (Score:2)
We used to call that "outsourcing".
In unrelated news (Score:2)
None of it adds up (Score:2)
We're frying the planet... (Score:2)
...to build another Clippy. With vulnerabilities and unmaintainable code. In fact, forget Clippy.
Yay humanity.
Lines of code (Score:2)
There have been times in the past where goofing around on my own projects or experiments, I've cranked out many hundreds of lines of code in a day. It's possible that I've exceeded 1000 lines in one day. It usually computed the task at hand at least once, but it wasn't commented, documented, code reviewed, fitted with unit tests, run through any kind of QA process, etc.
On the other hand, I would estimate that when working for a salary and writing code that ran on mission-critical systems, over the course of
HR. So easy an IT nerd could do it. (Score:2)
You don't need perfection to start. You just need to dive in.
Really? Well maybe I should have that attitude walking into an HR department regarding current law then. Especially around handling PII. Let's just 'vibe' my way through mitigating risk and see what happens, shall we?
(Sure. It feels good to find you can do something after 25 years. That doesn't automatically mean you're doing it properly or securely.)