In the AI era, leaving a company or role may not mean forever.
On Wednesday, Business Insider reported that Amazon is trying to recruit back workers it previously laid off. They’re not the only company dialing up former employees. One CEO of a small tech firm said she laid off staff, hoping AI would suffice — only to regret it. Another company more than doubled its boomerang hires in the last two years.
And in a related staffing reversal, Meta asked some of its recently reassigned employees to become managers once again.
Call it an AI-era boom in boomerangs.
The type of rehiring happening at Amazon and elsewhere is broadly on the rise. Revelio Labs, which analyzes employment data, found that by the end of 2025, 3.4% of new hires in the US were former employees, up from 3.1% two years earlier.
It comes as companies increasingly point to AI when announcing layoffs. Through July, employers attributed nearly one in four announced job cuts to AI, making it the leading reason cited for layoffs for the fifth consecutive month, according to career transition firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Amazon spokesperson Haley Silva said the company is always interested in connecting with former Amazonians for open roles. “Rehiring former employees is a normal, long-standing part of how we recruit,” she said.
Like ‘sneaking back’
Maria Colacurcio, CEO of pay-intelligence platform Syndio, came to regret an AI-driven restructuring. Weeks after laying off five employees, including labor economists and other domain experts, she realized the company had gotten ahead of itself. She has since rehired one of them for a newly created position.
“We moved really fast,” she told Business Insider. “The technology wasn’t quite there yet.”
Colacurcio said she also should’ve given at least some of the workers she let go a chance to adapt to new roles she created as part of her reorg strategy. She’d expected other employees to move into those positions, but few were willing to do so.
“One of the things we get wrong is when we assume too quickly that people who are in a certain role can’t evolve,” said Colacurcio. “When you give people the right tools and training around AI, they can evolve.”
The rehired employee, Jonathan Vidales of Washington, D.C., said he wished Syndio had considered him for the role he has now before laying him off. After former colleagues told him about the opening two months post-layoff, he reapplied because, he said, “I wasn’t ready to go.”
Vidales, who first joined Syndio in 2021 as a pay equity consultant, described coming back like “sneaking back into the house after I got kicked out.” Now a global account partner, he said AI has made parts of his work easier, though not obsolete.
“AI can do a lot of the tedious things,” he said. “But human judgment and relationships remain essential,” particularly when working directly with customers.
Familiar territory
Former employees can be appealing recruits, whether they were laid off, of left by choice.
At Deel, an HR and payroll platform, CEO Alex Bouaziz welcomes back workers who leave on good terms. The company said its boomerang hires more than doubled between 2024 and 2026.
Returning employees, he said, “understand the company” and “have the right relationships inside of the company to make some things happen faster.”
Other executives described similar benefits. David McJannet, cofounder of AI-agent platform Dome Systems, said he keeps an eye out for former high performers because they “come with the contextual understanding that’s super super valuable.”
Likewise, Dennis Woodside, CEO of business software company Freshworks, said employees who return after building products elsewhere often bring back expertise that “can be super valuable for us.”
Boomerangs are common in Big Tech and beyond, like in the case of top investor recruiter Matt Giannini, who is returning to Citadel for the third time.
Going back to a former employer isn’t for everyone.
Software engineer Jack Nguyen left Amazon in 2021, returned to the company a year later, and was laid off at the start of 2026. Dave Lewis, a product manager and sales executive, was laid off by Amazon in 2022, rehired the following year, and then joined Microsoft, where he was laid off again.
Not all workers want to return. After Google laid off Rob Waters last year, the company encouraged him to apply for a new role. He turned down the eventual offer to pursue his own venture. The layoff, Waters said, “ripped the Band-Aid off.”
