It was Wednesday the 28th of January at 02:48. I was checking my phone for the last time, right after getting into bed after a long day and late night from being over-caffeinated.
And there it was. A notification. The one you don’t want to see.
Important Information About Your Role at Amazon
My heart sank. I knew exactly what that email meant, and it was 100% a surprise to see.
“What had I done to justify this?” I thought, just as I opened the email to read more.
Hi Andrew,
I have some important, but difficult, news to share with you. After a thorough review of our organization, our priorities, and what we need to focus on going forward, we’ve made the hard business decision to eliminate some roles across Amazon. Unfortunately, your role is being eliminated as part of these changes and your employment will end after a notification period.
My heart raced. Immediate panic set in. “What should I do next?” I thought.
As it turns out, not much.
As of now, you are no longer required to perform work on Amazon’s behalf and will continue to receive your full pay and benefits for the next 90 days.
[…] you’ll receive a separate email from Amazon - Enterprise Document Management ([email protected]) with your formal announcement paperwork by the end of the day today.” and “During your non-working transition period, you’ll continue to have access to internal email, Chime, and A to Z on your personal device, and our primary mode of communication with you will be through email. Please keep your YubiKey to access email on a personal laptop/computer.
And with that, my work laptop was inaccessible. Locked out of the environment I’ve been accustomed to for over the last 11 years.
Hired November 2014 as an AWS Premium Support Engineer (L4).
To be laid off April 2026 as an AWS Systems Development Engineer II (L5).