Amazon to off another 9,000 workers to reduce its workforce even further
According to CEO Andy Jassy’s memo to staff on Monday, Amazon is dismissing an additional 9,000 employees. AWS, Twitch, advertising, and human resources personnel are among the staff members who will be laid go.
The “uncertain economy,” according to Jassy’s memo, is to blame for the layoffs, and the business has “decided to be more efficient in our costs and workforce.” A total of 18,000 employees across the corporation, including those in its hardware and services, human resources, and retail divisions, were recently let go by Amazon.
Also, this comes just after Twitch CEO Emmett Shear resigned from his post; however, it’s unclear whether his resignation had anything to do with the layoffs since Shear will still be working for the company in an advising capacity. In a blog post, CEO Dan Clancy stated that the downsizing impacted “just over” 400 individuals. Some Twitch streamers have expressed frustration with recent changes to how the company divides revenue with them, and some of the platform’s best streamers have switched to rival game streaming services like YouTube. Like many other businesses, Clancy’s company has been damaged by the present economic climate, and user and revenue growth has not met expectations. “We have made the very painful decision to reduce the amount of our personnel to run our business sustainably.”
Jassy notes that various teams’ internal analyses weren’t finished simultaneously, so the business didn’t announce all of the layoffs at once. According to Jassy, the corporation didn’t want to “rush” these evaluations because they would result in the reprioritization of some professions. To ensure that everyone received the information as soon as possible, we decided to communicate these decisions as they were made.
The memo states that the impacted teams still haven’t decided which employees to let go of. By mid-to-late April, the business hopes to make these decisions and tell staff members. Those affected will receive severance money, temporary health insurance, and assistance finding outside employment.
The fourth quarter of 2022 was the worst for Amazon ever, and the business ended the year with a $2.7 billion net deficit, it is first since 2014. In recent months, Amazon has taken several cost-cutting measures, such as slowing the growth of its Fresh stores and postponing the development of its second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.
The e-commerce behemoth is hardly the only significant business struggling with cash flow and layoffs in the middle of a shaky economy. Tens of thousands of employees have already been let go by Meta, Microsoft, and Google this year.
