Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior vice president responsible for the global Employee Experience and HR Technologies organization, says she returned to building software after a 25-year hiatus and, with the help of artificial intelligence tools, managed to write more than 100,000 lines of code. Galetti presents her experience as evidence that AI-powered development tools are no longer intended exclusively for professional programmers.
Galetti began her career as a software developer in the transportation sector, then moved into leadership roles that included serving as chief information officer and managing Amazon’s air and ground transportation networks. After moving into human resources leadership, she no longer wrote code herself, although she continued overseeing teams that built software.
From a Family App to an Internal Tool
Her first return came through a simple app for organizing family schedules, which she built outside work using artificial intelligence tools. She later used the Kiro development tool during a trip to Seattle to build an application for receiving submissions to an internal competition launched by Amazon under the name “Everyone Can Build.”
The competition invited employees to build an app or tool that addressed a real problem at work or in daily life, without requiring a technical background. According to the article, more than 1,500 employees began building projects within just a few weeks. Among the examples Galetti cites is an app that turned a manual process taking about four hours into an automated check taking one second, saving tens of thousands of work hours annually. Another employee also developed an office app called Momo that displays tasks, reminders, and shortcuts.
Galetti says these tools do not replace employees’ capabilities but expand what they can accomplish. However, this statement remains an opinion based on her experience and that of the competition as Amazon presents them, rather than an independent measurement of code quality or operational impact.
Three Roles for AI Inside Amazon
Amazon uses different tools for different purposes. Amazon Quick is a work assistant that teams can use to ask questions about data, conduct research that used to take weeks, and build automated workflows. Kiro, meanwhile, is aimed at building tools; it allows users to describe what they want in natural language and then helps them plan, write, and test it.
The company also uses the internal assistant Aza to answer questions about benefits, compensation, workplace accommodations, and information technology, as well as to perform tasks such as booking meeting rooms, applying for leave, or searching for open positions. Amazon says all of its employees have access to AI tools, and it has also made Quick and Kiro available outside the company.
What Is Changing in Practice?
The most important change in Amazon’s experience, according to Galetti, is moving some stages of tool development from the technology teams’ waiting list to the employees who directly encounter the problem. This may free development teams to focus on larger projects, but it also raises questions that the article does not answer: Who reviews code produced by non-specialists? And how are privacy, security, and accuracy risks managed when HR or operational procedures are converted into automated workflows?
Moreover, the ease of creating a prototype does not automatically mean that it is ready for enterprise use. The article provides examples of speed and savings, but does not present independent indicators concerning error rates, maintenance costs, or the number of projects that moved from experimentation into actual operation.
Training Is Part of the Vision
Amazon connects making tools available with developing skills. The company announced the Future Ready 2030 program, along with a $2.5 billion commitment to expand access to education and training and help 50 million people prepare for the future of work. The initiative includes programs for students, pathways to cloud jobs, and vocational training in mechatronics and robotics.
The company also says it is investing $1 billion in the Career Choice program, with the goal of developing the skills of an additional 500,000 employees globally, focusing on cybersecurity, software development, logistics, and renewable energy. Every Amazon employee receives free training in artificial intelligence, and the company also covers the cost of one annual exam for an AWS certification in artificial intelligence.
The experience thus reveals a practical direction: making AI tools available to employees outside technical teams and then supporting their use with training. However, the success of this model will not be measured by the number of lines the tools produce, but by institutions’ ability to ensure review and governance and to turn rapid prototypes into reliable, maintainable systems.