Amazon CEO Pens A Heartful Note On 9,000 Job Cuts.
Amazon is still quite positive about the future and the many chances that Amazon has, both in their two biggest companies, Stores and AWS, as well as in the more recent customer experiences and businesses they are investing in.
Amazon’s CEO, Andy Jassy, said in a message to workers at the start of this week that they feel the “tough” choice would be good for the firm in the long term as they announced 9,000 additional layoffs. With the most recent round of layoffs, the firm has massively reduced its workforce by 27,000 roles this year. Around 18,000 jobs at the massive e-commerce company were cut in January.
In his message, Jassy also explained why the two sets of significant layoffs were announced separately. According to him, the corporation opted to carefully review the evaluations rather than moving quickly because several team analyses were still waiting at the time.
But why is Amazon laying off thousands of workers once more?
The memo also said that the most recent firing decision was made following the end of its operational plan’s second phase. The official terminations are anticipated to be finished by the end of April and will mainly affect the AWS, PXT, Advertising, and Twitch divisions.
Although Amazon has made a lot of hires in the past, Jassy pointed out that the current economy’s “uncertainty” had led to a change in the company’s organizational structure. Outlining the future of the internet behemoth, he stated that it is striving to better ‘streamline its expenses, workforce and invest in long-term experiences that will enrich consumers’ lives’. According to the CEO, the choice to “re-prioritize” based on customer demands resulted in layoffs, internal job transfers, and even the creation of new roles.
In his email to the staff on March 20, Jassy justified not announcing the layoffs all at once. Some people might wonder why Amazon didn’t disclose these position reductions at the same time as the ones it did a few months ago. The simple explanation is that not all teams completed their evaluations by the end of the autumn. Rather than conduct these assessments hastily and without due investigation, Amazon decided to publicize these judgments as they were made so that people might learn about them as soon as possible, he wrote.
The same is true for this message since the impacted teams are still deciding which jobs will be specifically affected. After those choices have been taken, which is anticipated to happen by mid- to late-April, Amazon will inform the affected workers or, in the case of Europe, employee representation bodies, as appropriate.
Jassy thinks the outcome of this year’s planning cycle will be a plan that achieves this goal if they stick to their core principle of being leaner while doing so in a way that still allows them to invest heavily in the important long-term customer experiences that they consider can meaningfully improve customers’ lives and Amazon as a whole. He is still quite positive about the future and the many chances that Amazon has, both in their two biggest companies, Stores and AWS, as well as in the more recent customer experiences and businesses they are investing in.
The letter also described the assistance provided to fired employees, like separation money, interim health insurance coverage, and outside employment. It’s never easy to say goodbye, and they will be missed, he stated in his closing remarks, praising the fired employees for their efforts.
The corporation has been methodically reducing costs across the board, and earlier this month it announced that it was postponing work on a portion of its second headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. Since at least 2022, Amazon has also slowed the global growth of its network of distribution centers, warehouses, and other facilities, in some cases completely abandoning planned projects.
Some similar attributes in other players.
The parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, Meta, made a comparable approach before the second wave of heavy layoffs. After announcing 11,000 job cutbacks in November of last year, the company last week revealed intentions to lose an additional 10,000 employees this year while simultaneously implementing a recruiting freeze.
Since Elon Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion (£36 billion) last autumn, the company has also announced many waves of layoffs due to a steep decline in the advertising bookings that make up the majority of its revenue. Microsoft, Alphabet, the corporation that owns Google, and Salesforce, a provider of enterprise software, are more IT companies that have disclosed large layoffs.
Disclosure.
According to the website Layoffs.fyi, IT companies fired more than 150,000 employees last year, and 139,000 more layoffs have already been reported for 2023, including the most recent one from Amazon. Due to the unstable economic climate in major countries like the US, IT companies have started laying off employees and lowering their cost bases after overexpanding during the coronavirus pandemic.
edited and proofread by nikita sharma
