Amazon CEO Andy Jassy Is on a ‘Cost-Cutting’ Spree
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Update: Amazon kicked off more of its previously announced layoffs this week.
“It is a tough day across our organization,” AWS CEO Adam Selipsky wrote to staff, per internal memos published by CNBC. “We are working hard to treat everyone impacted with respect,” he added.
The company also announced it was ending sales of the Halo fitness wearable.
The most recent layoffs reportedly affect human resources and other departments, including Amazon Web Services (AWS). This is despite the cloud computing arm “easily” ranking as one of the company’s biggest money-makers, according to Gizmodo.
Original story below:
On Monday, Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy told employees the company would lay off around 9,000 more people, per CNBC.
“I’m writing to share that we intend to eliminate about 9,000 more positions in the next few weeks,” Jassy wrote in a memo that was also posted online.
“This was a difficult decision, but one that we think is best for the company long term,” he added.
Amazon announced in early January it would lay off about 18,000 employees. As Bloomberg noted, the layoffs began in late 2022 but were reported, at first, to only be job cuts of about 10,000 people.
This additional cut of 9,000 comes amid waves of layoffs at other big tech companies like Google and Meta as they wrestle with changes in consumer habits post-pandemic.
Jassy said the company had decided to “be more streamlined in our costs and headcount” because of the “uncertain economy.”
The CEO also said that this round of layoffs was not included in the January announcement because the teams were still finishing their analyses.
“The impacted teams are not yet finished making final decisions on precisely which roles will be impacted,” he added.
The roles being eliminated should be finalized by the end of April. Amazon will provide employees things like “separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, and external job placement support,” the memo said.
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