Amazon lays off another 9,000 employees.
The layoffs come in addition to the 18,000 job cuts the company announced earlier this year.
CEO Andy Jassy said they didn’t announce the additional job cuts earlier because some teams hadn’t completed their cost analysis.
Amazon’s layoffs will hit another 9,000 employees, e-commerce giant CEO Andy Jassy said Monday. In January, Amazon announced the elimination of 18,000 jobs.
“Some may wonder why we didn’t announce these job cuts along with those we announced a few months ago,” Jassy wrote in a memo to employees. “The short answer is that not all teams were finished with their analysis by late fall; and rather than rushing these evaluations without due due diligence, we chose to share these decisions as soon as we made them, so people can get the information as quickly as possible. The same applies to this announcement as the affected teams have not yet made final decisions on exactly which features will be affected.”
AWS, Twitch and advertising particularly affected by the layoffs
The company plans to implement the additional cuts “over the next few weeks,” Jassy wrote in the statement. It states that the layoffs at Amazon would particularly affect employees at Amazon Web Services (AWS), the live streaming platform Twitch and in advertising.
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“The overriding tenet of our annual plan this year has been to get leaner and do it in a way that allows us to continue to invest heavily in the most important long-term customer experiences that we believe drive the lives of people customers and Amazon as a whole can make meaningful improvements,” Jassy wrote.
The company is still deciding who exactly will be impacted by Amazon’s layoffs and expects to clarify those details by the end of April and provide severance pay and other support to those affected, he wrote.
“We will of course support those we have to lay off, offering packages that include severance pay, interim health insurance and external job placement assistance,” he said.
Jassy also explained that Amazon is making the cuts as part of its evaluation of the operational plan and that its own internal review has led to “decisions regarding reprioritization that have sometimes resulted in downsizing” or the reallocation of staff to other projects.
This also “led to new jobs for which we do not have the right qualifications from our current employees,” wrote Jassy. The company plans “limited hiring” in areas it is focused on, he said.
Amazon’s terminations follow those on Facebook
The latest round of cuts at Amazon follows the announcement by Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg last week of more layoffs at his social media and tech company. Like Zuckerberg, who warned of a “new economic reality” in the foreseeable future, Jassy in his Monday statement pointed to the “uncertain economy” as the reason for the cuts “to streamline our costs and workforce.”
The new year brought a slew of job cuts from companies in tech and beyond, including Salesforce and Goldman Sachs. Salesforce announced it would lay off about 10 percent of its employees, while Goldman Sachs this year has laid off about 6, 5 percent of its employees started, as Business Insider previously reported.
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Some also indicated that they want to slow down hiring. Zuckerberg said this month that the company is trying to achieve an “optimal balance of engineers and other roles,” and that it has ramped up its investment in artificial intelligence technology amid the excitement surrounding OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot hype.
Read Jassy’s Monday memo to Amazon employees here:
As we completed the second phase of our operational plan (“OP2”) last week, I would like to share that we will be cutting approximately 9000 more jobs over the next few weeks – primarily in AWS, PXT, advertising and Twitch . It was a difficult decision, but one that we believe is best for the company over the long term.
Allow me to make a few comments on this.
As part of our annual planning process, leaders across the business work with their teams to decide what investments to make for the future, prioritizing what is most important to customers and the long-term health of our businesses. In previous years, most of our business areas have increased their headcount significantly. In view of the development in our divisions and in the economy as a whole, this made sense. However, given the uncertain economic climate we are in and the uncertainty that exists for the near future, we have decided to streamline our costs and workforce. The key tenet of our annual planning this year has been to get leaner and do it in a way that allows us to continue to invest heavily in the most important long-term customer experiences that we believe transform customers’ lives and Amazon can significantly improve overall.
As our internal business units evaluated what was most important to customers, they made reprioritization decisions that sometimes resulted in downsizing, sometimes moving people from one role to another, and sometimes new roles for our existing team members didn’t have the right qualifications. First, we cut 18,000 jobs (we reported on that in January) and when we completed the second phase of our planning this month, that resulted in these additional 9,000 job cuts (though you’ll see some of our businesses in strategic areas where we’re the prioritized allocation of more resources, see limited hiring).
Some may wonder why we didn’t announce these job cuts along with the job cuts announced a few months ago. The short answer is that not all teams had completed their analysis in late fall. Instead of conducting these reviews without due diligence, we chose to publicize these decisions as soon as possible so that employees would have the information as soon as possible. Ditto for this announcement, as the affected teams have not yet made final decisions on exactly which features would be impacted. As soon as these decisions have been made (our goal is to have this completed by mid/late April), we will communicate with the affected employees (or in Europe with the employee representatives). Of course, we will support those we have to lay off and offer them packages that include severance pay, interim health insurance and external job placement assistance.
“I remain very optimistic”
Coming back to our tenet – to get leaner and do it in a way that allows us to continue to invest heavily in the most important long-term customer experiences that we believe shape the lives of customers and Amazon overall meaningful improvement – then I believe that the result of this year’s planning cycle is a plan that achieves this goal. I continue to be very optimistic about the future and the myriad opportunities that lie before us, both across our largest businesses, Stores and AWS, as well as our newer businesses and customer experiences in which we are investing.
To those ultimately affected by these layoffs, I would like to thank you for the work you have done on behalf of customers and the company. Saying goodbye to our teammates is never easy and we will miss you. I look forward to working with those who will continue to stay with us as we make our customers’ lives easier and tirelessly inventing new things every day.
Andy
This text was translated from English by Jannik Rade. You read the original here.
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