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It hasn’t been a week since Meta started its second huge round of layoffs (which arrived very quickly in Israel as well), and the waves of cuts in the tech giants show no signs of slowing down. A short time ago (Monday), the CEO of Amazon informed the company’s employees that 9,000 more employees would lose their jobs.
27,000 employees in a few months
Amazon’s second round of layoffs comes only two months after the “largest layoff in the world of technology,” when it announced that 18,000 workers would be laid off. In doing so, the company becomes the record holder of layoffs in the field of technology in the world. Jassi informed employees at the time that the layoffs would be concentrated mainly in Amazon stores and Amazon’s human resources division (or the “people, experience and technology” division in Amazon’s corporate parlance). Already in the wave of layoffs that began back in November, Amazon fired employees from its human resources division, alongside employees in the devices division – the division responsible for Amazon’s hardware, which includes smart speakers, tablets, Kindles, and more. Jassi did not refer to these layoffs in the message he published.
This time, the round of layoffs will focus on Amazon’s cloud division, AWS, but also on the advertising division, Twitch (the streaming platform purchased by Amazon) and the PXT department (which is the technology solutions and user experience division). In a message he sent to all Amazon employees, the company’s CEO, Andy Jassi, wrote that in the current economic situation there is too much uncertainty: “We have decided to be much more precise in our expenses and in our personnel.” According to him, Amazon’s transformation into a leaner company will allow the company to invest in long-term customer experience projects. According to him, the reason the company did not fire all these employees in advance already in the previous round lies in the fact that the team leaders had not finished their review process. “Instead of speeding up the review process without proper due diligence, we decided to share these decisions with you as soon as they were completed , so that people have the necessary information as quickly as possible.” The company’s goal, as of now, is to complete this layoff process by mid-to-late April.
“To those affected by these cuts, I want to thank you for the work you have done on behalf of customers and the company. It is never easy to say goodbye to team members, and we will miss you. To those who continue with us, I look forward to working with you to make our customers’ lives easier every day , and constantly invent more things on the way there.”
Despite the high number of those laid off in both rounds, it is important to remember that these are a few percentages of the total number of employees of the company – which employs approximately 1.5 million employees as of September 2022. However, the bulk of the employees are workers in the logistics centers, and now the damage is more significant.