It seems that Amazon is planning to layoff as many as 20,000 employees in the company, which is twice as much as was previously reported. Amazon will be firing people across several regions and these are distribution center workers, technology staff as well as corporate executives. The layoffs will take place in the coming months, the people familiar with the matter told folks at Computer World.
This doesn’t come as a surprise, considering Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy recently confirmed that Amazon is preparing to layoff employees in several departments. But he didn’t reveal the number of employees that would be impacted. In November, a few internal sources told The New York Times that the company was planning to sack 10,000 employees.
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Now, a fresh report is claiming that this number has increased and that Amazon plans to fire people at all levels, including the ones who are at the senior most positions. The company managers have reportedly been told to assess the work performance of employees, so that Amazon can start the layoff process of about 20,000 people, according to the cited source.
The e-commerce giant would be eliminating 6 per cent of corporate staff, and approximately 1.3 percent of Amazon’s 1.5 million workforce, which even includes global distribution center and hourly workers.
The cited source reported that the corporate staff have already been alerted that the impacted employees will be sent a 24-hour notice as well as severance pay. “There is a sense of fear among employees in the company as the news has come out,” one source told Computer World, who was informed about the layoff news.
“There is no specific department or location mentioned for the cuts; it is across the business. We were told this is as a result of over-hiring during the pandemic and the need for cost-cutting as the company’s financials have been on a declining trend,” the source said.
Amazon’s CEO recently announced that the process of layoff would continue for a few months and that the impacted employees will be informed once the company assess everything. So, the number of reductions might have been increased as it is rigorously reviewing all the departments across the regions to saves cost as
“Our annual planning process extends into the new year, which means there will be more role reductions as leaders continue to make adjustments. Those decisions will be shared with impacted employees and organizations early in 2023. We haven’t concluded yet exactly how many other roles will be impacted (we know that there will be reductions in our Stores and PXT organizations), but each leader will communicate to their respective teams when we have the details nailed down. And, as has been the case this week, we will prioritize communicating directly with impacted employees before making broad public or internal announcements,” Andy said.
