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Chennai: As part of the global downsizing strategy, Amazon India may let go over 500 jobs. However, after accommodating some of the laid off employees in other vacant roles, the company hopes that the net layoffs could be around 300.Amazon.com had earlier announced that it planned to eliminate 14,000 jobs as part of its efforts to become leaner. As per sources in Amazon India, the Indian arm would see over 500 jobs eliminated as part of this downsizing strategy.“While the exact numbers are not yet made known, considering the earlier instances of downsizing, the number of job roles that would cease to exist this time would be over 500,” the source said.“However, these are job roles and not people. In any given time, Amazon has several openings in different departments. When job roles cease to exist, some employees can be moved to other related jobs. This process would help retain some employees, though in different roles. So, the net layoffs could be around 300,” he added.Beth Galetti, Senior Vice President of Amazon.com said in her blog post: “It will mean an overall reduction in our corporate workforce of approximately 14,000 roles. We’re working hard to support everyone whose role is impacted, including offering most employees 90 days to look for a new role internally (the timing will vary some based on local laws), and our recruiting teams will prioritize internal candidates to help as many people as possible find new roles within Amazon. For our teammates who are unable to find a new role at Amazon or who choose not to look for one, we’ll offer them transition support including severance pay, outplacement services, health insurance benefits, and more”.AI is one of the reasons that is making the company go leaner. “This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we have seen since the Internet, and it's enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and altogether new ones),” said Galetti.However, in India there are other reasons as well. “During the pandemic times, e-commerce companies had seen high growth. Large number of new sellers had boarded the platform during that time. Such massive onboarding needed more employees to handhold them. While the sellers are still there on the platform, the lesser requirement of handholding has made several jobs redundant. This too could be a reason for downsizing,” he said.
