Amazon has announced plans to cut 9,000 more jobs marking the second largest round of tech layoffs in the company’s history, adding to the 18,000 employees it said would lay off in January resulting in shares falling 1.7 per cent in the wake of the news
Amazons new round of job cuts just two months after laying off 18,000 employees in January which accounted for 6% of Amazon’s workforce and were the largest in the company’s history
The tech giant is planning to make job cuts in the next fortnight, with a focus on reducing positions in their web, HR, and advertising departments.
The company will also be looking to reduce staff in the team responsible for managing their Twitch livestreaming service. No details have been provided about the number of cuts that will be made.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says the decision was made to ensure the company remained “streamlined” as tough market conditions bite across the globe.
In the memo, Jassy wrote that the second phase of the company’s annual planning process completed this month led to the additional job cuts.
“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,”
“Given the uncertain economy in which we reside, and the uncertainty that exists in the near future, we have chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount,” Mr Jassy said in a company-wide email that has since been shared online,” Jassy said.
PXT, which includes Amazon Fresh, Amazon Go, and the Alexa department, among others has also suffered previous layoffs affecting both its e-commerce and physical store operations.
In November of last year, Amazon announced that there would be significant job cuts in the near future and had already stopped hiring new staff.
