The layoffs will affect 9,000 people. Amazon lay off several employees in its advertising operation last week, and it has also laid off employees in its video games and Twitch livestreaming units in recent weeks.
Amazon completed a separate wave of layoffs earlier this year, affecting around 18,000 employees. When combined with the cuts made earlier this month, it is the greatest layoffs in Amazon’s 29-year history.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has been aggressively cutting expenses throughout the firm as the e-commerce giant prepares for an economic slowdown and sluggish growth in its main retail division. Amazon has halted corporate recruiting, cancelled certain experimental initiatives, and curtailed warehouse growth.
Jassy has demonstrated that two of Amazon’s largest and most successful companies, advertising and AWS, are not immune to cost-cutting measures. Both AWS and advertising have seen slower growth in recent months as businesses cut down on spending in the face of a hard economic climate.
The previous wave of layoffs affected Some AWS teams. According to a current employee who wanted to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorised to talk on the topic, a chunk of the layoffs announced on Wednesday would go to AWS’ professional services arm, which helps clients fix difficulties with their cloud infrastructure.
The Covid epidemic resulted in a significant boost for Amazon and other cloud providers as businesses, government organisations, and schools accelerated their transfer to the cloud.
“Given this rapid growth, as well as the overall business and macroeconomic climate, it is critical that we focus on identifying and putting our resources behind our top priorities, those things that matter most to customers and that will move the needle for our business,” the memo said. “In many cases this means team members are shifting the projects, initiatives or teams on which they work; however, in other cases it has resulted in these role eliminations.”
Amazon will publish first-quarter profits after the market closes on Thursday. Investors will be looking for information on whether Jassy’s cost-cutting measures have improved profitability, as well as when Amazon executives estimate AWS growth to resume. Amazon shares rose more than 3% in Wednesday afternoon trade.
