Amazon will lay off another 9,000 employees in the coming weeks. This was announced by the managing director, Andy Jassy, in a letter sent to staff on Monday. The cuts come on top of previously announced layoffs that began in November and extended into January. On that occasion, Amaazon decided to lay off more than 18,000 employees.
The company’s goal, as explained in the letter, is to try to optimize costs. What weighs, explains number one Jassy, is above all “the uncertainty that exists in the near future”. The company has just completed the second phase of the annual budgeting process, internally referred to as “OP2”.
Last week Meta, the Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp holding company, also announced a new round of layoffs: 10,000, which added to the 11,000 decided last November. The motivation is always the same: to reduce costs in 2023, the year that Mark Zuckerberg has defined as the “year of efficiency”. The reasons given by Jassy in her letter sound the same.
«The main principle of our annual planning has been to be leaner. But to do so so that we can invest robustly in key long-term customer experiences, which we believe will significantly improve the lives of customers and Amazon as a whole,” said the CEO.
The latest deal will primarily impact Twitch’s cloud computing, HR, advertising and livestreaming businesses, Jassy said in the statement.