(Jan 28): Amazon.com Inc is cutting 16,000 corporate jobs in an effort to remove layers of bureaucracy and “increase ownership”, becoming the latest company to target managers for lay-offs in recent years.
The tech firm will offer US-based employees 90 days to search for a new role internally, as well as severance and other transition support, Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior vice-president of people experience and technology, said on Wednesday in a blog post.
“We have been working to strengthen our organisation by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy,” Galetti said. She said it’s “not our plan” to announce broad staff cuts every few months and said the company would continue to “make adjustments as appropriate”.
Companies across industries have been trimming management layers in the name of becoming leaner and more productive. Last year, Microsoft Corp cut thousands of workers with a focus on reducing management, Nissan Group of North America cut 20% of its top management positions, and Amtrak similarly targeted roughly 20% of its own top-level management.
Just as Amazon was announcing its own lay-offs, chip-making machine giant ASML Holding NV said it is eliminating 1,700 positions largely targeting managerial roles.
The reductions take Amazon’s announced job cuts to 30,000 in three months after an initial wave in October. Chief executive officer Andy Jassy has repeatedly said he is determined to cut management layers that began to concern executives after a pandemic-era hiring binge. Last year, he also warned employees that artificial intelligence (AI) will shrink the workforce as Amazon automates more of its operations.
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While the company employed about 1.57 million people as of Sept 30, most of them work in warehouses. The corporate workforce comprises about 350,000 personnel, meaning the latest cuts represent about 4.6% of that headcount.
Employees were informed about the cuts earlier on Wednesday, though some had been given a heads up that they were coming. Amazon senior vice-president Colleen Aubrey prematurely scheduled a meeting titled “Project Dawn” that referred to “impacted colleagues” based in the US, Canada and Costa Rica. The email, which said “changes like this are hard on everyone”, quickly spread on internal message boards and social media sites like Reddit where workers were discussing the anticipated job cuts.
A number of tech companies have started the year by announcing lay-offs. Meta Platforms Inc said it would eliminate more than 1,000 jobs from its Reality Labs division to redirect resources to AI wearables and phone features. Pinterest Inc said on Tuesday that it plans to cut “less than 15%” of its workforce and will reduce office space, also in an effort to shift resources towards AI. Autodesk Inc said it will cut about 1,000 positions.
Uploaded by Tham Yek Lee
