Amazon.com Inc. intends to shed 10,000 positions, the most ever at the e-commerce behemoth, as it prepares for slower growth and a future recession. According to those familiar with the situation, the layoffs would most likely target Amazon’s devices business, which is responsible for the Echo smart speakers and Alexa digital assistant, as well as Amazon’s retail divisions and human resources.
As part of the company’s yearly planning process, teams are deciding where to cut staff, according to the sources, who asked anonymity to discuss a private topic.
In the face of declining sales growth and economic uncertainties, CEO Andy Jassy has pledged to reduce operations. Last month, the Seattle-based corporation forecast that the holiday season would be the slowest in its history, causing Wall Street to panic and the stock to plummet.
Some long-term Amazon employees, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an internal subject, claimed the recent cost-cutting has been the most severe they’ve ever seen.
In New York, the stock was down around 1.4%. The anticipated layoffs were first revealed by the New York Times.
The world’s largest online retailer has spent much of this year adapting to a significant slowdown in e-commerce growth as consumers reverted to pre-pandemic habits. Amazon delayed warehouse openings and stopped recruiting in its retail division before extending the freeze to the rest of the corporation. In recent weeks, Jassy has increased his emphasis on discovering cost-cutting opportunities among experimental and underperforming enterprises. Among other projects, the corporation shut down teams working on a telemedicine service, a delivery robot, and a video-calling gadget for children.
At the end of September, Amazon employed 1.54 million workers, the great majority of them were hourly employees who packed and shipped things in warehouses or worked in Whole Foods Market and other retail outlets. Amazon’s corporate staff is centred in Seattle, a developing Washington-area campus, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Austin, Texas, and Boston.
Following years of rapid expansion, Amazon’s Devices and Services segment, which manufactures consumer devices and Alexa, is particularly vulnerable to shrinking. The company’s voice-activated gadgets have sold well, but they haven’t matured into the must-have shopping gateway that its creators envisioned. Smart speakers frequently end up in people’s closets.
To withstand the dotcom crash in the early 2000s, Amazon laid off thousands. Since then, the corporation has gone through phases of primarily self-imposed austerity to tackle organisational fat, often stopping recruiting on big teams for months at a time.
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