Copyright Cable News Network
Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy’s explanation for why the company is cutting 14,000 employees? Not money. Not even AI, but “culture.” The layoff announcement this week was “not really financially driven, and it’s not even really AI driven, not right now. It’s culture,” Jassy said in response to an analyst question on the company’s earnings call Thursday. Amazon’s quarterly sales grew 13% year-on-year to $180 billion. Jassy explained that as Amazon added headcount, locations and lines of business in recent years, “you end up with a lot more people than what you had before, and you end up with a lot more layers … sometimes without realizing it, you can weaken the ownership of the people that you have who are doing the actual work.” Amazon’s headcount peaked at more than 1.6 million in 2021; it ended last year with around 1.5 million employees, according to SEC filings. “It can lead to slowing you down as a leadership team,” he said. “We are committed to operating like the world’s largest startup, and … that means removing layers.”
