Pippa Hillebrand

We make a big deal about being right about things. We want to be known as experts in our fields. We want people to respect our thoughts and ideas. We go out of our way to be right, even when we know we are wrong. There is something so deeply satisfying about being right when someone else is wrong.
Sometimes, I wish I was wrong. Sometimes we allow the inner cynic to do a little predictive thinking, and we start to suggest some bad things, or distasteful things might be on the horizon. In those moments, are we secretly hoping that these predictions will prove false? I suspect I am, because I know that if I am right the impact on individuals will be far larger than I am comfortable with.

Current Events

On 2025-10-28 another round of Amazon layoffs started happening. Yes, this was the triggering event for a blog post about times when I don’t want to be right. So, let me lay it out for you.

I am not an economist. I am not an accountant. I am not a finance guru. What I am is a realist, a compassionate human, and a pretty decent software engineer. I also left AWS in 2024 not happy about the decisions being made by the top level of leadership. Techies know that there was a post-COVID market correction in the tech space. That’s fancy finance jargon for people sold a lot of shares in the big-tech space, and that brought the prices down. Also, investors and stakeholders didn’t see the same value in these tech giants as during COVID when they suddenly figured out how much people could achieve when working from home. So, the market corrected. Suddenly big tech companies were no longer hiring, and were actually starting to lay people off. We all know or knew people who were impacted by that change. Brilliant people who were forced out of long term roles.

You know what has always made me the most mad? Is the way the process is handled. I’ve watched people be laid off well, and watched them be laid off poorly. It is never a good experience, but when you work for a startup being impacted by the market correction and you have a meeting with the CEO who says “we have to close the shop, because if we keep going any longer we won’t have enough money to pay the legally required severance” you at least know where you stand. It isn’t a great experience, you are still left unexpectedly without a job. The key point is that in this situation, you know that you are a valued human being, and the relationship of trust is not burned beyond recognition. What drives me ballistic with the Amazon process (and yes, here I’m naming names, because this isn’t a secret I’m exposing) is the early morning email and immediate termination.

First of all, not news to share via email folks. If you’re going to impact someone this deeply, removing their ability to provide for themselves and their family at short notice, at the very least have the civility of a face to face conversation. The impersonal email at a time when nobody is reading it screams “you are just a number”. It makes me grateful for the depths of protection South African labour law offers. There is too much red tape to do that in this country, it is far more efficient to make policy decisions around in-office work and not hiring to fill gaps. Counting on people to leave.

So yes, I’m low key angry about current events. Not least because I think it is short sighted, but because I know that people are being negatively impacted by a large corporate I once believed in. There is a lingering personal betrayal felt when such actions are taken.

I hope I’m wrong

There is a secondary knock on effect when things like this start happening. Again, not an economist, and I am building off a gut feeling, so if people have the data to prove me wrong, then maybe we can find a positive alternative to my suggestion.

The post-COVID correction wasn’t only about brick-and-mortar stores coming back to life after communities began to re-emerge. It was also the period in which twitter transitioned to X (and believe it or not, we still prefer the old name). When that happened thousands of people were let go just months after the acquisition. Then all of a sudden you couldn’t get a job with Amazon, Google, Microsoft, or Meta either. I don’t know about Netflix, but wouldn’t be surprised if they struggled. One of the big groups starts going down hill, and the market assumes the others will follow. They may recover, they may have reasons for what they’re doing, but there is a snowball effect.

This is why I hope I’m wrong.

Not just because I don’t want people to lose their jobs. Not just because I don’t fully understand the macro-economics at play in these instances. I hope that I am wrong about people looking at the “reasons” Amazon has given for layoffs and believing that those reasons apply to them as well. I hope that people will not assume that just because an executive thinks something is a good idea, and a chief financial officer is the scariest person in the room, that it is necessarily a good plan. People asked me after I took time off from Amazon if I would consider returning, and I told them “not whilst the top level leadership is acting the way they are”. I hate the fact that those actions have continued, and are likely to continue further as people lose track of reality.

So, I hope I’m wrong. I hope this isn’t going to impact more than the 30 000 people earmarked by an arbitrary algorithm (probably written by an LLM) to be told via an impersonal email that it is time to add a green circle to their LinkedIn profiles.

Please watch out

I know there is more happening. I know I have a lot of cynicism. I don’t believe that any one technology is a panacea. I believe that the LLM bubble will bust, and the residue will be an interesting smattering of tools and tricks which have to be rebuilt into a stable empire. The market is due to correct, and major tech companies are going to feel it. Our world has been embedded in consumerism for so long, that those who are looking at alternatives may find themselves in trouble.

One of these days a massive cloud provider is going to suffer an outage which will make all their previous issues seem minor. On that day, when the internet comes to a standstill, and only a handful of services are still working, we may choose to ask if we took that reliance too far? If we allowed the markets to regulate an industry which had outgrown the regulatory scope of commercial success?

A massive cloud outage could cause impact to industries you would never consider. We already know that healthcare systems are vulnerable. Financial institutions. Educational systems. Did you know that the agriculture industry could also be impacted? Did you know that there could be food shortages due to shipping delays due to systems being down? That crops could be impacted by a reliance on a system notification that never comes through?

Again. I hope I’m wrong. I hope that people who build critical systems are looking out for over reliance on one thing. I hope that I am just a cynical person who has been burned one time too many by corporate greed. I hope that I am just a Luddite, calling for the machines to better the lives of people before they take centre stage.

I hope I am wrong.

Here be dragons

Many people reach a point where they are ready to give up on technology as an industry. We say “let me instead go do this other thing”. We grow tired of our own cynicism.

I still believe that there is good to come out of technology. I love the fact that I can text people and that I can organise fun things. I love the fact that I can play games across oceans and timezones, and learn from people in different countries.

My true hope, is that in time, we will be able to stamp out the inequality which comes with greed, and provide opportunities via the skills we have built. I’m not giving up, but I know that there are dragons on my path.