After hiring freeze, Amazon wants to cut 18,000 jobs


After tech giants Meta and Twitter, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced plans to cut just over 18,000 jobs.

Last November, Amazon announced plans to cut positions in its device and book businesses and freeze hiring. According to Andy Jassy, ​​the majority of the jobs cut relate to Amazon Stores and the People, Experience, and Technology organization.

These cuts follow a period of rapid hiring in recent years. Employees who are affected worldwide will be notified on January 18, says Andy Jassy.

“To communicate on these subjects, we generally expect to be able to speak with the people directly concerned. However, since one of our teammates leaked this information to the outside, we decided it was best to share this news sooner, so you could hear the details straight from my mouth. We intend to communicate with affected employees (or, where appropriate in Europe, with employee representative bodies) from January 18,” he wrote.

Going through an “uncertain” period

the wall street journal revealed Amazon’s layoffs ahead of the announcement, noting that the job cuts represent about 5% of its workforce.

Andy Jassy took over from Jeff Bezos as head of Amazon in July 2021. For him, the company is “inventive, resourceful and resourceful” as it navigates uncertain economic times. This situation has had the effect of slowing down hiring, and even leading to the elimination of certain positions.

“Companies that are long-term go through different phases,” he argues in a memo posted on the company’s blog.

“They’re not massively expanding their workforce every year. We often talk about our leadership principle, “Invent and Simplify”, in the context of creating new products and new features. There will be many more in all the activities we pursue. But sometimes we overlook the importance of critical invention, problem-solving and simplification, which determine what matters most to customers (and the business), to adjust the allocation of our resources and time, and finding a way to do more for customers at less cost (passing the savings on to customers). »

Salesforce is also tapping into its workforce

2023 is picking up where 2022 left off, with tech companies adjusting hiring plans and new projects after booming at the start of the pandemic, followed by supply chain issues. global supply, higher inflation, higher interest rates and fears of recession.

The announcement of Amazon’s job cuts came just after Salesforce announced it was cutting its global workforce by about 10%. This announcement concerns some 8,000 employees. The company will also begin to reduce the size of its offices in certain markets. Affected employees were notified by email on Wednesday.

In a letter to his employees, Marc Benioff, the general manager of Salesforce, justified this decision by hiring too many employees during the pandemic. Charges related to workforce and office space reductions are expected to be between $1.4 billion and $2.1 billion – between $1 billion and $1.4 billion being for severance, benefits and stock compensation, and 450 to 650 million to costs related to the reduction of office space.

“The context remains difficult, and our customers are adopting a more measured approach in their purchasing decisions. With this in mind, we have made the very difficult decision to reduce our workforce by around 10%, mainly over the next few weeks,” said Marc Benioff in his letter to employees. “As our revenues accelerated with the pandemic, we hired too many staff, which led to the economic recession we are currently experiencing, and I take responsibility for that. »

Source: ZDNet.com





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