Why The Great Amazon Web Services Outage Was Unsurprising (And Will Likely Happen Again)
The Consequences Of Leadership Decisions For The Past Two Years
Hey Seekers!
Welcome to Today’s Edition of the Seeking Sageship Newsletter!
Your Daily Guidance to Go Beyond Leadership!
All Subscribers have Access to the Free Section…
1%+ Compounded Improvement in 1% of Your Time Maximum!
Plus, a Preview of the “Psychophysiological Freedom” Paid Section Is Available!
Let’s Dive In…
Why The Great Amazon Web Services Outage Was Unsurprising (And Will Likely Happen Again)
The Consequences Of Leadership Decisions For The Past Two Years
On October 20, 2025...
Tens of Millions of People and Thousands of Companies were Horribly Surprised to Discover...
Nothing on the Internet was Working.
With some people Claiming that “Half” of the Internet went Out!
Now, that may be a bit of an exaggeration...
But the World Really was Surprised by Exactly How Much was Out...
And How Long it took One of the Largest Tech Companies to Identify and Solve the Problem.
How Long Did it Take to just “Identify” the Problem?
75 Minutes.
Then to “Resolve” the Problem, it took...
15 Hours.
It is Estimated that Billions of Dollars of Economic Damage was highly likely based on Previous, Shorter, Outages that have Occurred.
The Largest Question though is “Why”?
How Could “This Large” of an Outage have Occurred?
Well, there are Two Answers.
The “Technical” Answer was identified as Problems with the, “DNS resolution of the DynamoDB API endpoint for US-EAST-1”.
Now, Don’t Worry, You Do Not Need to Understand “What” that Means, because it Really Does Not Matter...
Nor Does it Explain the Important “How”.
Because although “Technically” that was the Problem...
What it Does Not Answer is “How” Nobody Could Fix it for 15 Hours.
Why Brings Us to the Second Answer to How this Occurred...
Poor Leadership Decisions Over the Past Two Years.
What Happened at that Time?
Well, that was the Beginning of the Return-To-Office “Mandates” that Companies Were Making...
Including Amazon.
CEO, Jassy, at that time Made a Unilateral Decision to Enforce Mandates...
Which Were Not Really Working.
There were “Veiled” Threats from Jassy to Force People Back into the Office...
Which Not Only made him Sound Incompetent in Getting his Workforce to Listen...
But it Caused things like 1,900 Employees who Actively Staged a Walkout over the “Lack of Trust” in Leadership.
In Response, Jassy Doubled Down...
Citing the Ridiculous “Serendipity” Movement that Became Popular at the Time...
But Clearly was Stupid because No One is Saying it Anymore...
Because it Made “Absolutely” No Sense based on Human Psychophysiology.
It Never Worked as it was “Supposed” to in “Theory”...
Because it was “Never” Made Sense Based on Reality.
It also Did Not Help when Leaders like Mike Hopkins stated, “... it’s time to disagree and commit. We’re here, we’re back - it’s working... I don’t have data to back it up, but I know it’s better.”
Data that Hopkins, Nor Anyone, has Ever Had...
The Result of this was a Growing Resentment that Occurred with Employees.
The 1,900 Employees who Spoke Out against Leadership at the Beginning...
Grew to 30,000 Employees...
30,000 Employees who were Tired of the “Cult of the CEO”...
Who Rated Jassy at 1.4 on a Scale of 1 to 5.
Now, that Number is Actually Misleading Because the “Lowest” You can Score Someone on this Scale is 1 and Not 0...
So let me Do the Math for You to Help You Understand How Poorly Amazon’s Employees Were Rating Jassy at the Time...
On a Scale of 0% to 100%...
Jassy was Rated at 10%.
Clearly a Failing Grade.
Worse, is that these 30,000 Employees actually “Gave” Solutions to Leadership for the Problems that Leadership was Causing...
While telling Leadership that, “This is not ‘going back’ to how it was before. It’s just going backwards.”
Clearly these were Motivated Employees who “Wanted” to Help the Problems...
But Were Not “Able” to Because of Leadership.
What has Been the Response of Leadership at Amazon?
Double Down on Return-to-Office Mandates...
Refusing to Listen to Employees...
And Laying Off Approximately 31,000 Employees throught that time.
Now...
What Do You Imagine will Happen...
When Good and Talented Employees “Want” to Drive a Company Forward into the Future...
But Leaders Refuse to Listen to Them...
And Continue to Make Threats...
Against a Growing Chorus of Employees...
With Continued Looming Lay-Offs?
Well, those Good Employees will, at some point, say...
No More.
Which is What Began to Happen...
Not Just at Amazon, but Across the Tech Sector who has Been Making “Similar” Decisions to Amazon.
The Tech Sector has had the Largest Exodus of Talent that has “Ever” Happened in Tech...
Because People are Done.
What is the Tech Response to This?
Double Down on their Decisions...
And Now they are Also Adding Artificial Intelligence into the Mix...
Actively “Telling” Employees that they “Will” Be Replaced.
How Do You Imagine that Makes People Feel?
When I was Working in Corporate America before Starting My Own Business...
I was Put in a Similar Position of Being Told that, in a Few Months, I would No Longer have a Job and that I “Had” to Train My Replacements.
I Can Tell You from Experience that it is a Terrible and Toxic Position to Be In...
One which is Spreading Across the Tech Industry...
And Especially at Amazon.
How Bad has it Been at Amazon?
There are Internal Reports of 69% to 80% “Regretted Attrition”...
Which Means High Level Talent Leaving that Amazon Wished Had Stayed.
It was Estimated in 2022 that Amazon was Losing $8 Billion Annually from Attrition “Alone”.
That is a Lot that is Lost...
But what that “Fails” to Take into Account is the “Wisdom” that is Lost.
When Employees Do Not want to Return to the Office...
When they are Tired of Not Being Listened To...
When they Become Sick of Looming Lay Offs...
And When they Do Not Want to Train their Replacement “Artificial Intelligence”...
Who has the Best Opportunity to Leave?
Those with the Most Experience...
Who have Seen the Most Problems...
Who Understand the Systems the Best...
Who are the Most Valuable on the Job Market.
Wisdom is Lost.
Which Explains How this Problem Lasted 15 Hours.
The People Who Would Have “Known” How to Fix it Faster...
Were All Gone.
Leaving People without Experience...
Who Were Burnt Out...
Meaning they were Operating at 5% or Less of their Productivity Potential and were Significantly Less Able to Solve Problems based on Psychophysiology...
Trying to Piece Together a Puzzle they Did Not have the Picture To.
This is the Natural, Unsurprising, and Inevitable Result of the Leadership Decisions over the Past Two Years.
You would “Imagine” that this Might be a Wakeup Call...
But What is Amazon’s Response?
They have Plans to Do “Further” Layoffs...
And Replace with Artificial Intelligence...
Which We Continue to See Being Less and “Less” Impressive...
From Being Shown to be a Contributing Factor in Making People Dumber...
To Being Described as No Better than “Interns” that Constantly Need AI Babysitters...
AI Babysitters who, themselves, will Not Be Able to Become Innovative because their “Entire” Role will be Constantly Babysitting these Intern AI’s...
Not to Mention the Many Reports of AI Destroying Productivity...
And doing things like Ordering Cubes of Tungsten Steel for the Snack Room after an Employee Joke.
What Does This Mean for Amazon?
The Most Likely Result...
Is that the Most Talented Individuals will Continue to Leave...
Wisdom will Continue to be Lost...
And More Problems will Occur...
Especially when AI is Launched at Mass Scales to “Replace” Employees...
Leading to More Problems that Take Long Periods of Time to Resolve.
Those Who Seek Sageship Also Cultivate Others!
Share this Article Today With Someone Who Needs It and Earn Exclusive Rewards!
Are You Ready To Become A Sage?
Paid Subscribers will Gain ‘Exclusive’ Access to…
Read the Entire “Psychophysiology Freedom” Deep Dive Section for Exponential Results
Access to the “Full” Paid Archive (Check Out the Cultivation Center for More)
Connect Further in the “Subscriber Only” Chat & Comments Section
“Directly” Impact Regenerative Projects around the Globe
With “More” Coming In The Future…
It’s Time to Change The World!
Psychophysiological Freedom
For Paid Subscribers
So, where Leadership has Clearly Failed…
What are the Sageship Insights that We Should Take Away from All of this?
I have Five Specific Insights from this Ongoing Story.
Let’s Dive In…
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Seeking Sageship: Beyond Leadership to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.