Amazon, the e-commerce giant with a global workforce of 1.5 million, has announced its plan to cut around 9,000 jobs in the coming weeks as part of its cost-saving measures. The job cuts will largely affect its cloud computing and advertising sectors.
Amid a hiring boom across the technology industry, the company’s workforce doubled during the pandemic. However, this trend is now shifting, with many tech firms revealing plans to cut tens of thousands of jobs this year.
Andy Jassy, the CEO, stated that it was a challenging decision but necessary for the company’s future success. This is the second time Amazon has laid off staff, having previously cut 18,000 jobs in January.
In a recent memo, Jassy revealed that the second phase of Amazon’s yearly planning process, which concluded this month, resulted in more job cuts. The CEO also mentioned that the company would continue to hire in select strategic areas.
Jassy clarified the reason behind not announcing these cuts simultaneously with the ones made a few months ago, saying that some teams had not completed their analyses during the previous announcement. He added that rather than rushing the process, they chose to reveal the information as soon as each decision was finalized.
In his words, “Some may ask why we didn’t announce these role reductions with the ones we announced a couple months ago. The short answer is that not all of the teams were done with their analyses in the late fall; and rather than rush through these assessments without the appropriate diligence, we chose to share these decisions as we’ve made them so people had the information as soon as possible,” Jassy said.
Cutoffs in tech companies like Amazon are not uncommon, and they can be driven by various factors such as market conditions, company strategies, and budget constraints.