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Amazon is preparing to lay off up to 30000 corporate employees starting Tuesday as it looks to reduce costs after hiring too many people during the pandemic according a report in NDTV. The number of job cuts is small compared to Amazon’s total workforce of about 1.55 million but it represents nearly 10 per cent of its 350000 corporate staff. This would be Amazon’s biggest round of layoffs since late 2022 when around 27000 jobs were cut. Over the past two years the company has been slowly reducing jobs in several areas including its devices communications and podcasting teams. The new round of cuts is expected to affect different departments such as human resources (also called People Experience and Technology or PXT) operations devices and services and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Managers whose teams are affected were reportedly given training on Monday on how to speak with employees about the layoffs. Email notifications informing staff are expected to begin going out on Tuesday morning. Why Amazon is taking this step now Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is leading a major effort to cut down what he calls unnecessary layers of management and slow decision-making inside the company. As part of this push he introduced an anonymous feedback system where employees can report inefficiencies. The system has received about 1500 suggestions and led to more than 450 improvements so far. Earlier this year Jassy said that the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) could result in more job cuts as many routine and repetitive tasks can now be automated. According to eMarketer analyst Sky Canaves the latest round of layoffs shows that Amazon is seeing real productivity gains from its AI tools and is using those efficiencies to justify reducing its workforce. She added that the company is also under pressure to balance its heavy spending on AI infrastructure with short-term cost savings. The total number of job cuts is still uncertain and may change depending on Amazon’s financial goals. Reports suggest that the human resources department could face a reduction of about 15 per cent. Some insiders also say that Amazon’s strict return-to-office policy has contributed to the layoffs. The company’s rule requiring employees to be in the office five days a week one of the toughest in the tech industry did not cause as many people to quit as expected. Now employees who fail to show up regularly including those who live far from Amazon offices are being told they have effectively resigned and will not receive severance pay.
