Earlier this week, reports surfaced Amazon intended to reduce its workforce by 10,000 employees. Amazon did not confirm the layoffs for two days, but SVP Dave Limp confirmed them in an email to employees that was later made public. According to the message, Amazon will “consolidate some teams and programs” in the devices and services departments.
Despite a large number of layoffs, Limp maintains in his message that the affected departments — which include the Alexa, Echo, Kindle, Ring, Eero, and Fire TV devices — are still “an important area of investment” for the company. Limp stated that if internal transfers are possible, Amazon will assist the laid-off employees, otherwise they will receive a separation payment, interim benefits, and job placement help.
There has been no quantification of the ended employees, but Limp stated that the affected roles were notified on November 15. According to CNBC, if the 10,000 figure was correct, the layoffs would affect less than 1% of the company’s payroll. Amazon plans to hire 150,000 temporary workers to help with the holiday rush.
Amazon’s downsizing is not an outlier. Asana announced a workforce reduction yesterday, and activist hedge fund TCI Fund Management also pressed Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc. to “aggressively” reduce its costs and losses, according to The Wall Street Journal. TCI reportedly owns more than $6 billion in Alphabet stock. According to Dice Insights, Google cut its hiring plans in half heading into the fourth quarter after falling short of its Q3 profit forecast.
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Meta cut 11,000 jobs earlier this month, and Twitter remains a lawless land as the social media platform goes through a painfully rocky transition of ownership and operations. According to CNBC, the tech layoff trend is a reaction to dwindling consumer interest in shopping because of inflation, a decrease in digital advertiser spending, and overall uncertain economic conditions as the year come to a close.
