Amazon CEO Andy Jassy Says Layoffs Will Extend Into Next Year
Mr. Jassy, in a note to employees made public, said positions are being eliminated across Amazon’s devices and books businesses. The company is cutting jobs across its corporate ranks that could affect 10,000 employees, or 3% of corporate staff, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
“I’ve been in this role now for about a year and a half, and without a doubt, this is the most difficult decision we’ve made during that time,” said Mr. Jassy, who spoke about the cuts for the first time on Thursday. “It’s not lost on me or any of the leaders who make these decisions that these aren’t just roles we’re eliminating, but rather, people with emotions, ambitions, and responsibilities whose lives will be impacted.”
The Amazon boss said the company hadn’t determined how many roles exactly would be affected by the cuts and was reviewing its workforce levels and investments.
Tech Layoffs
Amazon’s layoffs have affected employees across a variety of teams, including in Amazon’s Luna cloud-gaming service, Alexa marketing, Alexa AI and Alexa Privacy and the Lab126 innovation arm, according to employees.
Technology companies that grew quickly during the last two years—when Covid-19 forced millions of people to spend more time online working, going to school and shopping—have faced a reckoning as revenue growth has slowed and people turn to prepandemic habits.
Some executives, including
Meta Platforms Inc.’s
Mark Zuckerberg,
have acknowledged that excessive optimism about growth led to overstaffing, the Journal reported. Meta is cutting more than 11,000 workers, 13% of staff, and companies including Twitter Inc., Stripe Inc.,
Redfin Corp.
,
Lyft Inc.
and others have announced job cuts that collectively exceed 100,000 positions in 2022, according to layoffs.fyi, which tallies announcements based on news reports.
Amazon executives have acknowledged that the devices unit has been an area of focus for cuts. The business, which is headlined by the Alexa voice-assistant brand, has lost more than $5 billion annually in some recent years.
Dave Limp,
Amazon’s senior vice president of devices and services, said in a message to employees made public Wednesday that his staff notified affected employees on Tuesday and were working to help them find new jobs.
Employees who don’t find a new role at Amazon are set to receive severance in some cases of one week’s pay for every six months worked, according to employees, with a maximum pay of 20 weeks. Some employees in human resources have also been given the option to voluntarily leave the company through buyout offers. Amazon didn’t publicly provide details of severance packages.
Like many companies, Amazon has referred to a slowing economy as one reason for cutbacks. But Mr. Jassy said in the memo that the review had been difficult given the rapid pace of Amazon’s hiring during the past two years. Between the end of 2019 and end of 2021, Amazon hired more than 800,000 employees, mostly at its hundreds of warehouses.
Layoffs are rare at Amazon, which employs more than 1.5 million employees globally.
Mr. Jassy has been leading a cost-cutting review focusing on unprofitable units. While Amazon has said it remains invested in Alexa’s future, executives have considered whether the company should focus on trying to add new capabilities to the program that would require more investment, people familiar with the matter said.
Mr. Jassy said Amazon continued to have growth opportunities in both established and newer businesses, including in advertising and Amazon Web Services and in ventures such as healthcare and autonomous vehicles.
“Amazon has weathered uncertainty and difficult economies in the past, and we will continue to do so,” he said.
Write to Sebastian Herrera at [email protected]
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Mr. Jassy, in a note to employees made public, said positions are being eliminated across Amazon’s devices and books businesses. The company is cutting jobs across its corporate ranks that could affect 10,000 employees, or 3% of corporate staff, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
“I’ve been in this role now for about a year and a half, and without a doubt, this is the most difficult decision we’ve made during that time,” said Mr. Jassy, who spoke about the cuts for the first time on Thursday. “It’s not lost on me or any of the leaders who make these decisions that these aren’t just roles we’re eliminating, but rather, people with emotions, ambitions, and responsibilities whose lives will be impacted.”
The Amazon boss said the company hadn’t determined how many roles exactly would be affected by the cuts and was reviewing its workforce levels and investments.
Tech Layoffs
Amazon’s layoffs have affected employees across a variety of teams, including in Amazon’s Luna cloud-gaming service, Alexa marketing, Alexa AI and Alexa Privacy and the Lab126 innovation arm, according to employees.
Technology companies that grew quickly during the last two years—when Covid-19 forced millions of people to spend more time online working, going to school and shopping—have faced a reckoning as revenue growth has slowed and people turn to prepandemic habits.
Some executives, including
Meta Platforms Inc.’s
Mark Zuckerberg,
have acknowledged that excessive optimism about growth led to overstaffing, the Journal reported. Meta is cutting more than 11,000 workers, 13% of staff, and companies including Twitter Inc., Stripe Inc.,
Redfin Corp.
,
Lyft Inc.
and others have announced job cuts that collectively exceed 100,000 positions in 2022, according to layoffs.fyi, which tallies announcements based on news reports.
Amazon executives have acknowledged that the devices unit has been an area of focus for cuts. The business, which is headlined by the Alexa voice-assistant brand, has lost more than $5 billion annually in some recent years.
Dave Limp,
Amazon’s senior vice president of devices and services, said in a message to employees made public Wednesday that his staff notified affected employees on Tuesday and were working to help them find new jobs.
Employees who don’t find a new role at Amazon are set to receive severance in some cases of one week’s pay for every six months worked, according to employees, with a maximum pay of 20 weeks. Some employees in human resources have also been given the option to voluntarily leave the company through buyout offers. Amazon didn’t publicly provide details of severance packages.
Like many companies, Amazon has referred to a slowing economy as one reason for cutbacks. But Mr. Jassy said in the memo that the review had been difficult given the rapid pace of Amazon’s hiring during the past two years. Between the end of 2019 and end of 2021, Amazon hired more than 800,000 employees, mostly at its hundreds of warehouses.
Layoffs are rare at Amazon, which employs more than 1.5 million employees globally.
Mr. Jassy has been leading a cost-cutting review focusing on unprofitable units. While Amazon has said it remains invested in Alexa’s future, executives have considered whether the company should focus on trying to add new capabilities to the program that would require more investment, people familiar with the matter said.
Mr. Jassy said Amazon continued to have growth opportunities in both established and newer businesses, including in advertising and Amazon Web Services and in ventures such as healthcare and autonomous vehicles.
“Amazon has weathered uncertainty and difficult economies in the past, and we will continue to do so,” he said.
Write to Sebastian Herrera at [email protected]
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Denial of responsibility! Techno Blender is an automatic aggregator of the all world’s media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials, please contact us by email – [email protected]. The content will be deleted within 24 hours.