Amazon to cut 14,000 jobs across company

Amazon will reduce its overall workforce by 14,000, cutting layers of management across the company and hiring in some areas to support its “biggest bets”.

Staff will hear from their managers later today about the cuts, and affected employees will have 90 days to look for a new role internally, the company said.

“Some may ask why we’re reducing roles when the company is performing well,” wrote Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior VP of people experience and technology, in a blog post on the company’s website.

The reason is AI, she said.

“This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and altogether new ones). We’re convicted that we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business.”

The job cuts are a continuation of a strategy adopted by CEO Andy Jassi a year ago to “operate like the world’s largest startup,” Galetti wrote.

Amazon has been cutting out middle management roles for several years now, a sure way to realize economies on payroll in the short term, but there are other ways to get better business value out of reorganizations.

Reuters reported Monday night that the cuts could affect the Amazon Web Services cloud computing business, the company’s HR department known internally as People Experience and Technology, and its devices and services business, among other areas. But the report also put the number of job cuts at up to 30,000, far higher than the total job cuts Amazon announced, suggesting that the company may intend to hire or move up to 16,000 staff in the reorganization. Amazon employs around 350,000 in corporate roles, with another 1.2 million in other roles, Reuters said.

AWS already went through a smaller round of layoffs in April 2024.Amazon to cut 14,000 jobs across company – ComputerworldRead More