Another 9,000 employees affected in new Amazon layoff exercise

It seems that these tech layoffs are still going to continue for a while. Tech giant, Amazon, announced, that it intends to eliminate about 9,000 more positions in the next few weeks—mostly in AWS, PXT, Advertising, and Twitch.

In a message made available to its employees on the 20th of March, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that the company chose to terminate the jobs to streamline its costs and headcount, given the current uncertain economy and the uncertainty that exists in the near future.

This news comes barely months after it laid off 18,000 employees in January 2023 principally affecting the People, Experience, and Technology (PXT) organization of the company.

According to Jassy, “the overriding tenet of our annual planning this year was to be leaner while doing so in a way that enables us to still invest robustly in the key long-term customer experiences that we believe can meaningfully improve customers’ lives and Amazon as a whole.”

He also explained why this new exercise was not included in the January layoff exercise.

“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. The same is true for this note as the impacted teams are not yet finished making final decisions on precisely which roles will be impacted.”

“Once those decisions have been made (our goal is to have this complete by mid to late April), we will communicate with the impacted employees (or where applicable in Europe, with employee representative bodies). We will, of course, support those we have to let go, and will provide packages that include a separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, and external job placement support.”

In a related story, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy confirmed that Twitch accounts for over 400 people out of the 9,000 people to be laid off in Amazon.