Amazon’s layoff has continued in 2023 as the company’s CEO, Andy Jassy, shared a message with the employees today, briefing them on the new updates on role elimination.
The briefing was done sooner than expected to address the rumours about the layoff plans leaked by some employees. According to Andy, he had planned to communicate with the impacted employees and representative bodies starting January 18th.
The elimination process will cut across several teams in the company but, most especially, their team in the Amazon Stores and PXT organizations.
Read Also: Amazon plans to lay off 10,000 employees this week
This new layoff update follows the layoff of almost 10,000 Amazon employees last year. The company revealed that leaders across the company have been working with their teams and looking at their workforce levels, investments they want to make in the future, and prioritizing what matters most to customers and the long-term health of the businesses as part of its annual planning process for 2023,
These affected employees represent less than 1% of the over 1.5 million employees that the company as of September 2022 had. Speaking about the new update, Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, in his heartfelt message, said,
“In November, we communicated the hard decision to eliminate a number of positions across our Devices and Books businesses and also announced a voluntary reduction offer for some employees in our People, Experience, and Technology (PXT) organization. I also shared that we weren’t done with our annual planning process and that I expected there would be more role reductions in early 2023”
Today, I wanted to share the outcome of these further reviews, which is the difficult decision to eliminate additional roles.
Between the reductions we made in November and the ones we’re sharing today, we plan to eliminate just over 18,000 roles. Several teams are impacted; however, the majority of role eliminations are in our Amazon Stores and PXT organizations.
He said the business aims to provide packages that include “a separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, and external job placement support.”
“To those impacted by these reductions, I want you to know how grateful I am for your contributions to Amazon, and the work you have done on behalf of customers. You have made a meaningful difference in a lot of customers’ lives. To those who will continue on the journey with us, I look forward to partnering with you to keep making life better and easier for customers every day and relentlessly inventing to do so,” the statement concludes.
Layoffs in the tech space
Amazon’s layoff is one of the largest from a major technology company. With the year starting this way, it is unclear what the rest of the year will hold for other technology companies.
This is especially true given that the sector experienced a surge in layoffs, a hiring freeze, and significant workforce reductions last year.
However, many tech companies, including Amazon, are still laying off employees. Several other technology companies have announced layoffs in their new year plans this week.
Salesforce earlier this week announced it would lay off approximately 10% of its employees, i.e. around 8,000 workers, based on the company’s most recent reported headcount.
Anjali Sud, CEO of Venmo, also announced the decision to reduce the size of our team by 11% in a message to the Venmo team on January 4th.
Read Also: We curated a list of the 5 biggest tech casualties of 2022. Here is why they flopped
The economy that most likely influenced these decisions by tech companies is still uncertain.
Even though according to Andy Jassy, Amazon has weathered some uncertain and difficult economies in the past year, it plans to do better this year. These changes will help them pursue its long-term opportunities with a stronger cost structure.
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