Fortune via Reuters Connect
- The tech giant has been cutting costs since growth slowed after the pandemic.
- Amazon managers were warned recently to prepare for job cuts this week.
- CEO Andy Jassy has been overhauling the tech giant via a hardcore culture reset.
Amazon is planning thousands of job cuts across its corporate workforce, and managers have been warned to prepare for an announcement this week, according to people familiar with the matter, an internal document, and internal messages seen by Business Insider.
The move is expected to be announced on Tuesday, and will impact employees in the US, the UK, and Canada, according to recent internal messages sent to Amazon managers.
A draft email that’s due to go out to impacted employees noted that Amazon is eliminating jobs “after a thorough review of our organization, our priorities, and what we need to focus on going forward.” The draft document also described a severance package that includes full pay and benefits for the next 90 days. Business Insider viewed a copy of this draft email, along with copies of the internal messages to Amazon managers.
Various teams within Amazon, including human resources and retail, will be affected, the people familiar said. Thousand of employees will likely be eliminated, these people added, while asking not to be identified discussing sensitive topics. An Amazon spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.
CEO Andy Jassy has been overhauling the tech giant this year, reseting a hardcore culture that existed when Amazon was a smaller, scrappier company. He’s slashed layers of management, attacked bureaucracy, enforced strict cost discipline, updated performance metrics and pay structures, and sent most corporate employees back to the office five days a week.
That followed a post-pandemic period when Amazon responded to a dramatic growth slowdown. The company scaled back unprofitable projects and trimmed a bloated workforce.
Amazon doubled its workforce to 1.6 million from 2019 to 2021, but that number dipped to 1.55 million last year. Amazon has already cut at least 27,000 employees since late 2022.
In June, Jassy told employees that efficiency gains from AI would reduce the company’s workforce. Amazon also froze the hiring budget for its big retail business earlier this year. And the cloud business, Amazon Web Services, saw layoffs in July.
Reuters reported on Tuesday that the cuts this week could impact as many as 30,000 employees. That would represent roughly 10% of Amazon’s corporate workforce. Reuters said the job cuts would affect Amazon’s HR and devices teams. Fortune previously reported that Amazon could cut up to 15% of its HR staff.
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