Whole Foods plans to lay off several hundred corporate employees: Read the memo here
Amazon‘s Whole Foods is letting go some corporate employees as part of a planned reorganization of select teams, and as its parent company closely examines costs.
Whole Foods plans to reorganize certain global and regional support teams over the next two months, the company’s executive team wrote in a memo to employees on Thursday. As a result, the upscale grocer is laying off several hundred employees from those teams, a spokesperson confirmed. The cuts translate to about less than half of a percent of the company’s global workforce, a Whole Foods Market spokesperson said.
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“We often talk about how simplifying our work and improving how we operate is critical as we grow,” the executive team wrote in the memo. “We’ve made great progress in these areas through previous operational and organizational changes. As the grocery industry continues to rapidly evolve, and as we — like all retailers — have navigated challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic and continued economic uncertainty, it has become clear that we need to continue to build on these changes. With additional adjustments, we will be able to further simplify our operations, make processes easier, and improve how we support our stores.”
As part of the changes, Whole Foods, which operates across nine different regions, will shift to six regions. The move won’t result in any store closures or the letting go of any store or distribution center employees, according to the memo.
Whole Foods is tweaking its operational structure as it seeks to expand and better serve customers, the spokesperson said. The company has roughly 50 new stores in development, they added.
Amazon in 2017 spent $13.7 billion to acquire the upscale grocer, a move that sent shock waves through that industry. The retail giant acquired Whole Foods with the hopes of accelerating its multiyear push into selling groceries online and in physical stores.
Whole Foods has undergone other operational changes since Amazon acquired it. The company in 2021 merged its global and regional merchandising teams, and shifted its technology team to focus on software engineering, technical product and program manager roles, to “sustain our growth.”
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently hit pause on expansion of its Fresh supermarket chain amid a companywide effort to rein in expenses. It also shuttered some Fresh locations and Go cashierless convenience stores. Some employees in Amazon’s grocery unit were let go in a recent round of layoffs announced in January.
Still, Jassy has said he remains confident about Amazon’s potential to grow its grocery business. In his letter to shareholders last week, Jassy said the e-commerce giant “must find a mass grocery format that we believe is worth expanding broadly” to make a larger impact on brick-and-mortar grocery.
Here’s the full memo:
Improving Our Operating Structure to Better Support Our Stores
Dear Team Members,
We often talk about how simplifying our work and improving how we operate is critical as we grow. We’ve made great progress in these areas through previous operational and organizational changes. As the grocery industry continues to rapidly evolve, and as we — like all retailers — have navigated challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic and continued economic uncertainty, it has become clear that we need to continue to build on these changes. With additional adjustments, we will be able to further simplify our operations, make processes easier, and improve how we support our stores.
To achieve this, we will evolve our operating structure and make a few changes to certain Global and Regional Support teams over the next two months. We see great opportunity to advance our impact on the world, and these changes will help us fully capture that opportunity. These changes include:
- Shifting from nine to six regions with a more consistent number of stores per region. Moving to fewer regions of similar sizes will allow us to quickly make decisions, implement sustainable processes, and scale innovations. Ultimately, it will help us elevate the service we provide our customers, Team Members, and suppliers. As we redraw the lines of our regional map, some stores may become part of a new region, but this shift won’t result in any store or facility closures or change our commitment to maintaining local relevance in our stores. See our new regional map and leadership details below. Team Members can expect to hear from the leader of their future region early next week.
- Creating a unified, companywide Operations team by transitioning category-specific store operations support from regions to a single Field Support team within our Global Operations team. Additionally, we will alleviate supply chain management work from regions, transitioning these responsibilities to a new Supply Chain Performance Management function within our Global Supply Chain team. These changes will free up time for stores to focus on serving customers, while unifying communications and support around clear Operations priorities.
- Enhancing Team Member Services (TMS) support for Team Members and Leaders across the company by realigning TMS team structures. This will help eliminate a significant amount of transactional work, which will allow our TMS teams to focus more on supporting Team Member experience, growth, and development. This will also empower store leadership to operate with more agility and have more time to focus on priority initiatives.
- Adjusting structures and improving processes of several other Global Support teams to provide more effective, timely, and consistent support to stores and ensure support teams can focus on priority initiatives. We will begin sharing more information about Global Support team changes with respective teams today. We will also meet with store and facility leadership to discuss these updates in more detail.
These changes will impact our Team Members in different ways. Store and facility-based roles are not directly impacted, though there will be some adjustments to how support and store teams work together. There will be some reductions in headcount on certain Global and Regional support teams, and those impacted will receive more information today. While change is necessary and healthy for a sustainable business, it can also be very challenging, particularly when it affects the lives of Team Members. We are committed to supporting all impacted Team Members through these transitions.
As we simplify processes and improve how we operate, we will be able to quickly respond to evolving business needs, focus more on our most impactful work, and invest in new ways to serve all stakeholders. We are confident these changes will allow us to better support our stores, Team Members, and suppliers, elevate the customer experience, and position Whole Foods Market for continued growth. Most important, these changes will help ensure we deliver on our Purpose to nourish people and the planet for decades to come.
Sincerely, E-Team
Technology
Meet the 21-year-old helping coders use AI to cheat in Google and other tech job interviews
A person walks past the entrance to a Google building in Dublin, Feb. 15, 2023.
Artur Widak | Anadolu | Getty Images
After landing internship offers from Amazon, Meta and TikTok, computer science student Chungin “Roy” Lee has decided to move to San Francisco.
But he won’t be joining any of those companies.
Instead, Lee will be building his own startup that offers a peculiar service: helping software engineers use artificial intelligence to cheat in their technical job interviews.
“Everyone programs nowadays with the help of AI,” said Lee, a 21-year-old student at Columbia University, which has opened disciplinary proceedings against him, according to documents viewed by CNBC. A Columbia spokesperson said the university doesn’t comment on individual students.
“It doesn’t make sense to have an interview format that assumes you don’t have the use of AI,” Lee said.
Lee is at the forefront of a movement among professional coders who are exploiting the limitations of remote job interviews, popularized during the Covid pandemic, by using AI tools off camera to ensure they give hiring managers the best possible answers.
The hiring process that took hold in the work-from-home era involved candidates interviewing from behind a Zoom screen rather than traveling, sometimes across the country, for on-location interviews, where they could show their coding skills on dry-erase boards.
In late 2022 came the boom in generative AI, with the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Since then, tech companies have laid off tens of thousands of programmers while touting the use of AI to write code. At Google, for example, more than 25% of new code is written by AI, CEO Sundar Pichai told investors in October.
The combination of rapid advancements in AI, mass layoffs of software developers, and a continuing world of remote and hybrid work has created a novel conundrum for recruiters.
The problem has become so prevalent that Pichai suggested during a Google town hall in February that his hiring managers consider returning to in-person job interviews.
Google isn’t the only tech company weighing that idea.
But engineers aren’t slowing down.
Lee has turned his cheating into a business. His company, Interview Coder, markets itself as a service that helps software developers cheat during job interviews. The internship offers that he landed are the proof he uses to show that his technology works.
AI assistants for virtual interviews can provide written code, make code improvements, and generate detailed explanations of results that candidates can read. The AI tools all work quickly, which is helpful for timed interviews.
Hiring managers are venting their frustrations on social media over the rise of AI cheaters, saying that those who get caught are eliminated from contention. Interviewers say they’re exhausted from having to discern whether candidates are using their own skills or relying on AI.
‘Invisible’ help
The cheating tools rely on generative AI models to provide software engineers with real-time answers to coding problems as they’re presented during interviews. The AI analyzes both written and oral questions and instantaneously generates code. The widgets can also provide the cheaters with explanations for the solutions that they can use in the interview.
The tools’ most valuable feature, however, might be their secrecy. Interview Coder is invisible to the interviewer.
While candidates are using technology to cheat, employers are observing their behavior during interviews to try to catch them. Interviewers have learned to look for eyes wandering to the side, the reflection of other apps visible on candidates’ glasses, and answers that sound rehearsed or don’t match questions, among other clues.
Perhaps the biggest tell is a simple “Hmm.”
Hiring managers said they’ve noticed that many candidates use the ubiquitous sound to buy themselves time while waiting for their AI tools to finish their work.
“I’ll hear a pause, then ‘Hmm,’ and all of a sudden, it’s the perfect answer,” said Anna Spearman, founder of Techie Staffing, an agency that helps companies fill technical roles. “There have also been instances where the code looked OK, but they couldn’t describe how they came to the conclusion.”
Henry Kirk, a software developer and co-founder of Studio.init in New York, said this type of cheating used to be easy to catch.
“But now it’s harder to detect,” said Kirk. He said the technology has gotten smart enough to present the answers in a place that doesn’t require users to move their eyes.
“The eye movement used to be the biggest giveaway,” Kirk said.
Interview Coder’s website says its virtual interview tool is immune to screen detection features that are available to companies on services such as Zoom and Google Meet. Lee markets his product as being webcam-proof.
When Kirk hosted a virtual coding challenge for an engineering job he was looking to fill in June, 700 people applied, he said. Kirk recorded the process of the first interview round. He was looking to see if any candidates were cheating in ways that included using results from large language models.
“More than 50% of them cheated,” he said.
AI cheating tools have improved so much over the last year that they’ve become nearly undetectable, experts said. Other than Lee’s Interview Coder, software engineers can also use programs such as Leetcode Wizard or ChatGPT.
Kirk said his startup is considering moving to in-person interviews, though he knows that potentially limits the talent pool.
“The problem is now I don’t trust the results as much,” Kirk said. “I don’t know what else to do other than on-site.”
Google CEO Sundar Pichai during an event at the Google for Startups Campus in Warsaw, Poland, Feb. 13, 2025.
Omar Marques | Anadolu | Getty Images
Back to the Googleplex
It’s become a big topic at Google, and one Pichai addressed in February at an internal town hall meeting, where executives read questions and comments that were submitted by employees and summarized by AI, according to an audio recording that was reviewed by CNBC.
One question asked of management was, “Can we get onsite job interviews back?”
“There are many email threads about this topic,” the question said. “If budget is constraint, can we get the candidates to an office or environment we can control?”
Pichai turned to Brian Ong, Google’s vice president of recruiting, who was joining through a virtual livestream.
“Brian, do we do hybrid?” Pichai asked.
Ong said candidates and Google employees have said they prefer virtual job interviews because scheduling a video call is easier than finding a time to meet in available conference rooms. The virtual interview process is about two weeks faster, he added.
He said interviewers are instructed to probe candidates on their answers as a way to decipher whether they actually know what they’re talking about.
“We definitely have more work to do to integrate how AI is now more prevalent in the interview process,” said Ong. He said his recruiting organization is working with Google’s software engineer steering committee to figure out how the company can refine its interviewing process.
“Given we all work hybrid, I think it’s worth thinking about some fraction of the interviews being in person,” Pichai responded. “I think it’ll help both the candidates understand Google’s culture and I think it’s good for both sides.”
Ong said it’s also an issue “all of our other competitor companies are looking at.”
A Google spokesperson declined to comment beyond what was said at the meeting.
Other companies have already shifted their hiring practices to account for AI cheating.
Deloitte reinstated in-person interviews for its U.K. graduate program, according to a September report.
Anthropic, the maker of AI chatbot Claude, issued new guidance in its job applications in February, asking candidates not to use AI assistants during the hiring process.
“While we encourage people to use AI systems during their role to help them work faster and more effectively, please do not use AI assistants during the application process,” the new policy says. “We want to understand your personal interest in Anthropic without mediation through an AI system, and we also want to evaluate your non-AI-assisted communication skills. Please indicate ‘Yes’ if you have read and agree.”
Amazon is also taking steps to combat AI cheating.
The company asks that candidates acknowledge that they won’t use unauthorized tools during the interview or assessment process, spokesperson Margaret Callahan told CNBC.
Chungin “Roy” Lee, a 21-year-old student at Columbia University, is the founder of Interview Coder, a startup that makes software to help computer programmers cheat in job interviews with the help of AI.
Courtesy of Chungin Lee
‘F*ck Leetcode’
If you visit InterviewCoder.co, the first thing that greets you is large gray type that reads “F*ck Leetcode.”
Leetcode is the program used by many tech companies to evaluate software engineers for technical roles. Tech companies such as Meta, Google and Amazon use it to keep tabs on the thousands of job applicants they evaluate.
“Every time I mention interviews, I get frustrated comments about Leetcode,” wrote Ryan Peterman, a software engineer at Meta, in a newsletter posted on Substack in December. Peterman said Leetcode problems are purposely designed to be much harder than what software engineers would do on the job. Leetcode is the best tool companies have to filter hundreds of applicants, Peterman wrote.
Coders said they hate Leetcode because it emphasizes algorithmic problem-solving and asks applicants to solve riddles and puzzles that seem irrelevant to the job, according to those CNBC spoke with as well as comments CNBC found from engineers across various social media platforms. Another downside is that it sometimes requires hours of work that may not result in a job offer or advancement, they said.
Leetcode served as Lee’s inspiration for building Interview Coder, he said. With the help of AI, he said, he created the service in less than a week.
“I thought I wanted to work at a big tech company and spent 600 hours practicing for Leetcode,” Lee said. “It made me miserable, and I almost stopped programming because of how much I didn’t like it.”
Lee’s social media posts are filled with comments from other programmers expressing similar frustrations.
“Legend,” several comments said in response to some of his X posts. Others said they enjoyed him “f—ing with big tech.”
Rival software Leetcode Wizard was also inspired by distaste for Leetcode.
Isabel De Vries, Leetcode Wizard’s head of marketing, told CNBC in a statement that Leetcode-style interviews fail to accurately measure engineering skills and fail to reflect actual daily engineering work.
“Our product originates from the same frustrations many of our users are having,” De Vries said.
Leetcode did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Henry Kirk, a software developer and co-founder of Studio.init in New York, is considering moving job interviews to be on site in response to software engineers using AI to cheat in virtual interviews.
Photo by Krista Schlueter for Inc. Magazine
When Kirk, of Studio.init, posted on LinkedIn in February to vent about his frustrations with AI cheating, he received nearly 200 comments. But most argued that employers should allow candidates to use AI in the hiring process.
“Even the SAT lets you use a calculator,” said one comment. “I think you just make it harder to succeed on purpose when in the real world Google and gpt will always be at my fingertips.”
Lee promotes Interview Coder as being “invisible to all screen-recording softwares.” To prove its effectiveness, he recorded himself passing an Amazon interview and posted the video on YouTube. Amazon and the other companies that had made offers to Lee then rescinded them.
Lee got hundreds of comments praising the video, which YouTube removed after CNBC reached out to Amazon and Google for this story. YouTube cited a “copyright claim” by Amazon as the reason for removing the video.
“I as an interviewer am so annoyed by him but as a candidate also adore him,” former Meta staff engineer Yangshun Tay, co-founder of startup GreatFrontEnd, wrote in a LinkedIn post about Lee and his video. “Cheating isn’t right, but oh god I am so tired of these stupid algorithm interviews.”
After YouTube removed the video, Lee uploaded it once again.
Cheating as a service
Lee said he never planned to work at Amazon, Meta or TikTok. He said he wanted to show others just how easy it is to game Leetcode and force companies to find a better alternative.
And, he said, he’s making money in the process.
Interview Coder is available as a subscription for $60 a month. Lee said the company is on track to hit $1 million in annual recurring revenue by mid-May.
He recently hired the internet influencers who go by the name “Costco Guys” to make a video marketing his software.
“If you’re struggling to pass your Leetcode interviews and want to get a job at a big tech company, you’ve got to take a look at Interviewcoder.co to pass your interview,” the Costco Guys say in their video. “Because Interview Coder gets five big booms! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boooooom!”
Leetcode Wizard bills itself on its website as “The #1 AI-powered coding interview cheating app” and “The perfect tool for achieving a ‘Strong Hire’ result in any coding interview and landing your dream job at any FAANG company.” Leetcode Wizard charges 49 euros ($53) a month for a “Pro” subscription.
More than 16,000 people have used the app, and “several hundred” people have told Leetcode Wizard that they received offers thanks to the software, the company told CNBC.
“Our product will have succeeded once we can shut it down, when leetcode interviews are a thing of the past,” De Vries said.
Lee said he’s moving from New York to San Francisco in March to continue building Interview Coder and start working on his next company.
Kirk said he understands software engineers’ frustration with Leetcode and the tech industry. He’s had to use Leetcode numerous times throughout his career, and he was laid off by Google in 2023. He now wants to help out-of-work engineers get jobs.
But he remains worried that AI cheating will persist.
“We need to make sure they know their stuff because these tools still make mistakes,” Kirk said.
Half of companies currently use AI in the hiring process, and 68% will by the end of 2025, according to an October survey commissioned by ResumeBuilder.com.
Lee said that if companies want to bill themselves as AI-first, they should encourage its use by candidates.
Asked if he worries about software engineers losing the trust of the tech industry, Lee paused.
“Hmm,” he mumbled.
“My reaction to that is any company that is slow to respond to market changes will get hurt and that’s the fault of the company,” Lee said. “If there are better tools, then it’s their fault for not resorting to the better alternative to exist. I don’t feel guilty at all for not catering to a company’s inability to adapt.”
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