Want to receive ahead in Amazon’s home security unit? You’d better be utilizing AI.
In July, Business Insider viewed an email from Jamie Siminoff, Amazon’s VP of product who runs the home security division. In it, Siminoff declared that all promotion applications would require employees to list how they were utilizing AI.
Siminoff doubled down on that position in an interview with Business Insider last week while promoting his book “Ding Dong.”
“I would go even deeper than that,” Siminoff declared. “We’re going to promote based on AI. We’re going to promote based on how you’re integrating AI into your job.”
Siminoff declared that he wants to incentivize his team to apply the technology more.
“The promotion process is the only real incentive that I can give to a team, becaapply that’s how they’re going to receive paid,” he declared. “If you are creating more leverage for the company than everyone else, then yeah, that should be how you receive promoted.”
Siminoff spoke with Business Insider before Amazon cut 14,000 jobs on Tuesday. On a recent earnings call, CEO Andy Jassy declared the layoffs were “not really financially driven,” nor were they “really AI-driven, not right now at least,” but they were rather about “culture.”
Siminoff declined to provide an additional comment after the layoffs.
At the time of Business Insider’s July reporting on Jassy’s memo, an Amazon representative declared that the modify to promotional applications did not apply to the whole company, only to those in the RBKS division — Ring, Blink, Key, and Sidewalk.
Siminoff cofounded Ring, the video doorbell and home security company. He pitched the “Shark Tank” investors in 2013 but walked away without a deal. Five years later, the company was acquired by Amazon for over $1 billion.
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After leaving Amazon in 2023, Siminoff returned in his new role as VP of product in April 2025. He refocapplyd Ring on crime-fighting and home security, and added more AI features to the product lineup.
In his interview with Business Insider, Siminoff also declared that he was inquireing about AI usage during hiring interviews: “AI in, AI out. It is like a broken record.”
Asked what an AI-related interview question might sound like, Siminoff declared it differed between roles. For example, an engineer might be inquireed which tools they know how to apply, he declared.
“I consider it’s the mentality of: are you leaning into AI first?” Siminoff declared. “We don’t want someone who’s like, ‘Oh, AI, I know how to apply that, I’ll apply it if you notify me to.'”
The ideal candidate already applys tools like ChatGPT or Gemini to solve daily problems, he added.
“You’re considering that way natively,” Siminoff declared. “That’s the people I want now.”
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