Layoffs At Amazon: Read The Memos Announcing The Cuts

(CTN News) – In an attempt to cut costs, Amazon on Wednesday laid off some employees in its cloud computing and human resources departments.

In a note sent to staffers in the U.S., Canada and Costa Rica, Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky and Human Resources director Beth Galetti announced the job cut announcements.

As a result, it has been quite a challenging day throughout the entire organization,” Selipsky wrote in the memo.

In addition to the layoffs, 9,000 employees are also expected to lose their jobs in the midst of previously announced job cuts.

Recently, Amazon laid off some employees in its advertising unit, as well as staffers in its video games and Twitch livestreaming units in the past few weeks, as well as in its advertising unit.

It was announced by Amazon earlier this year that it had completed a separate round of cuts that affected approximately 18,000 employees.

Combined with the layoffs announced in the past few weeks, this makes the company’s 29-year history the one with the most layoffs.

The CEO of Amazon, Andy Jassy, has been aggressively slashing costs across the company as the e-retailer copes with the economic downturn and slowing growth in its core retail business, while simultaneously cutting costs across the organization.

In addition to freezing hiring in its corporate workforce, Amazon axed some experimental projects as well as slowed down the expansion of its warehouses.

As Jassy points out, by announcing layoffs in both AWS and ads, he has demonstrated that both of biggest and most profitable businesses are not immune from Amazon’s cost-cutting efforts.

As a result of the challenging economic environment, both AWS and ads have seen slowing growth in recent months.

There were a few teams within AWS that were laid off earlier in the year.

According to a current employee who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter, a portion of the cuts on Wednesday will be absorbed by Web Services’ professional services arm, which assists customers in troubleshooting their cloud infrastructure problems.

Covid led to a massive increase in headcount in AWS, which proved to be a boon for Amazon and other cloud providers as businesses, government agencies, and schools accelerated their migration to the cloud.

Selipsky writes in his memo, “Given this rapid growth, as well as the overall business and macroeconomic climate, we need to focus on identifying and committing our resources to our top priorities, those things that matter most to customers and will move the needle for our business.

“The majority of the time, this results in team members shifting the projects, initiatives or teams on which they work; however, in other cases, these roles have been eliminated.

A report on Amazon’s first-quarter earnings is scheduled for release after the close of the market on Thursday.

AWS investors will be looking for any indication as to whether Jassy’s cost-cutting efforts have improved profitability, and when Amazon executives expect that AWS growth will reaccelerate.

Amazon’s shares rose more than 3% in afternoon trading on Wednesday.

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