Amazon will reportedly be witness to the largest job cuts since 2022 in an effort to cut costs and make up for the overhiring that happened during the pandemic when demand had spiked. Starting today, Amazon will start trimming its workforce, impacting about 30,000 employees from its over 1.5 million-member workforce, as reported by Reuters.
Many jobs have already been cut over the past couple of years across various divisions, including podcasting, communications and devices. This time, it is expected that about 10 per cent of Amazon’s corporate employees will be affected.
Employees from the human resources function (people experience and technology or PXT) division are amongst those expected to bear the brunt of the cuts. Additionally, several members of the operations, devices and services, as well as the Amazon Web Services teams will also be affected.
The team managers were reportedly briefed on how to go about breaking the news to the employees when the layoff exercise commences today. The termination notifications are already on their way.
These layoffs are a result of the efforts by Andy Jassy, CEO, Amazon to do away with inefficient processes. In fact, he had reportedly put in place an anonymous line to point out inefficiency as a result of which hundreds of processes had been altered. The engagement of artificial intelligence (AI) tools has also played its part in the layoffs as the company starts seeing the benefits of relying on AI.
In early September, Amazon had rolled out stricter expense policies by directing employees to report how much of their company-issued phone usage is actually related to work. The move had reportedly affected the $50 monthly reimbursement employees received for mobile expenses, which will now be adjusted based on personal use.
Employees had also been told to justify their business trips by outlining expected returns and to itemise meal expenses instead of claiming them under flat allowances.
While Amazon maintained that as a principle it had always embraced frugality, these moves have been making the employees uneasy and uncertain for some time now.