Amazon Cuts 18,000 Tech Workers

(CTN News) – Among the 18,000 positions that will be eliminated, Amazon will cut more than it previously announced, making this the largest set of layoffs in the e-commerce giant’s history.

In a note to employees made public by the company on Wednesday, CEO Andy Jassy said the company usually waits to communicate about outcomes until it can speak with those affected directly.

The information was leaked externally by one of our teammates, so we decided to share this news earlier so that you could hear the details directly from me.

According to Jassy, the layoffs will impact the company’s brick-and-mortar stores, including Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go, and its PXT organizations, which handle human resources.

In November, he informed staff that layoffs were imminent due to the economic climate and the company’s rapid growth over the past several years.

As part of Wednesday’s announcement, earlier job cuts that had not been numbered were included.

In addition to offering voluntary buyouts, the company has also been reducing costs in other areas of its sprawling enterprise.

A number of companies, including Amazon, which has a global workforce of 1.5 million, are shedding employees after hiring aggressively in recent years.

Salesforce, a maker of customer management software, announced Wednesday that it would be laying off more than 7,000 staff members, or roughly 10% of its workforce.

In addition, it would be closing some offices. This is the largest reduction in employment in the 23-year history of a San Francisco-based company founded by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff, who pioneered the concept of leasing software services to internet-connected devices referred to as “cloud computing.”

Benioff wrote in a letter to employees that “as our revenue accelerated through the pandemic, we hired too many people leading to this economic downturn we are now experiencing.”

Salesforce employed approximately 49,000 individuals in January 2020, just prior to the outbreak of the pandemic. Despite the pandemic, Salesforce still has a 50% larger workforce than it did before.

Several tech companies have announced large layoffs or reduced hiring in recent months, including Apple, Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Netflix, Peloton, Twitter, and others.

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, acknowledged that he misread the revenue gains that his company enjoyed during the pandemic. He announced in November that 11,000 employees, or 13% of its workforce, would be laid off.

As a result of a tougher revenue environment, employers are becoming aggressive in cutting costs (which will support earnings),” Wall Street analyst Adam Crisafulli of Vital Knowledge recently reported.

Approximately 97,000 jobs were cut in the tech industry in 2022, an increase of 649% over the roughly Amazon 13,000 jobs eliminated the previous year.

This is according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. It was far more than the automotive sector, which lost 31,000 workers last year, the second highest number among all U.S. industries.

According to Andrew Challenger, senior vice president at Challenger, Gray & Christmas, “the overall economy continues to create jobs, but Amazon employers are planning for a downturn.

Hiring has slowed as companies take a cautious approach into the year 2023.”

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