Amazon Commences Second Round of Layoffs
- The 9,000 job cuts will be the second-largest layoff in the company’s history.
- Amazon joins Meta as the second tech giant to announce a second round of layoffs in recent weeks.
- Tech giants are slashing job roles to trim their operations following the 2020 hiring spree.
Internet giant Amazon has announced another wave of sizable layoffs that would see 9,000 employees lose their jobs. The news was shared in a memo published by the company’s CEO, Andy Jassy. Amazon noted that the layoffs will affect employees in its AWS cloud unit, Twitch game division, advertising, and PXT arm.
Jassy said in a statement posted on the company’s site.
Given the uncertain economy in which we reside and the uncertainty that exists in the near future, we have chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount.
The news comes months after Amazon announced that it would lay off 18000 employees. The new job cutbacks would be the second-largest round of layoffs in the company’s history. Like many other tech firms, Amazon saw a boom sponsored by the COVID-19 pandemic. The company embarked on a hiring spree to meet the demand and doubled its headcount in the process. However, with the world on the brink of an economic crisis, Amazon has had to trim its operations to survive the market. However, the company plans to hire for some strategic positions.
Sharing more details about the latest layoff, Jassy wrote in a statement,
Some may ask why we didn’t announce these role reductions with the ones we announced a couple months ago. The short answer is that not all of the teams were done with their analyses in the late fall; and rather than rush through these assessments without the appropriate diligence, we chose to share these decisions as we’ve made them so people had the information as soon as possible.
The fact that Amazon’s constant cash cow, AWS, has been affected by the layoffs is probably one of the biggest surprises in this situation. Although AWS is still in a rather good shape, its recent growth trajectory has not been as rapid as in the past, which is indicative of a general slowdown in spending on cloud infrastructure. It appears that businesses are attempting to cut expenses due to the global economic crisis, which results in less money being spent on areas like cloud computing.
Amazon joins Facebook parent Meta as the second tech giant to announce a massive job cut in recent days. Meta revealed last week that it would be laying off 10,000 more employees. Other tech heavyweights, like Microsoft, and Alphabet, have slashed thousands of jobs in recent months.
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