Month: October 2025

Controlling What You Can Control: Reflections on the AWS Layoff and Beyond

Controlling What You Can Control: Reflections on the AWS Layoff and Beyond

The recent news of AWS laying off 14,000 employees shook many across the industry. Even in a company as vast and disciplined as Amazon, moments like this remind us that no one is immune to the cycles of change. For those directly affected, it’s painful. For those who remain, it’s unsettling. But it’s in these moments that our mindset determines everything.

Over my 20 years in tech, I’ve lived through more downturns than I can count — the 2008 U.S. financial crisis, the 2021 COVID-19 pandemic, and the post-COVID correction in 2023 that reshaped nearly every industry. I’ve seen good engineers lose their jobs not because they weren’t talented, but because the tides shifted. I’ve been through those sleepless nights of uncertainty myself.

And through all of it, one principle has guided me:

Focus on what you can control.

You cannot control market sentiment, executive decisions, or macroeconomic events. But you can control how you respond. You can control your growth, your learning, your attitude, and how you show up every day — even in hard times. The world rewards resilience more than perfection. When chaos hits, the ones who stay calm, assess, learn, and move forward always find a way to rise again.

Your Skills & Attitude Are Your True Job Security

Every crisis I’ve witnessed had one consistent outcome: people with transferable, marketable skills always landed on their feet. And today, in the era of AI, that truth is amplified.

AI may change how we work, but it cannot replace why we work — the human ability to connect ideas, think critically, and build meaningful products. The future belongs to those who can combine deep thinking with intelligent tools.

If you want to future-proof your career, focus on these core skills:

  • Critical Thinking: The ability to analyze, reason, and see patterns where others see noise. AI can assist, but it cannot decide what truly matters.

  • Product Mindset: Think beyond code — understand user value, impact, and trade-offs. Be the engineer who thinks like a product owner.

  • Domain Knowledge: Deep expertise in an industry (cloud, fintech, healthcare, etc.) gives your skills context — something no general-purpose model can replicate.

  • Articulative Communication: Learn to explain complex systems simply. Great communicators multiply their influence.

  • Orchestration & System-Level Thinking: As systems become more intelligent and distributed, the ability to see the big picture — how components interact — becomes gold.

Combine these with AI literacy — prompt engineering, model reasoning, workflow automation — and you won’t just survive; you’ll thrive. You’ll become the 10x or even 100x engineer — not because you type faster, but because you think smarter and lead with purpose.

A Final Word

Layoffs hurt. They always do. But they don’t define you — how you respond does. The best engineers, leaders, and innovators I’ve known all share one thing in common: when faced with uncertainty, they invest back in themselves.

So if you’re going through this moment, take a breath. Take stock. Then take action. Learn something new. Rebuild your momentum. Surround yourself with positive people. The future still needs builders — and the best of them never stop learning.

Because no matter how many layoffs happen, the world will always need great minds who can think, create, and lead.