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Pink slips started going out this week at tech giant Amazon, the latest in a wave of late-year layoffs.
On Tuesday, Amazon laid off 14,000 corporate workers, about 4% of its worker population. Reuters reports that the move is part of a larger reduction that could affect 30,000 employees, slashing the corporate workforce by 10%.
While AI is often cited in recent headlines as the culprit behind workforce reductions, a public memo from Amazon leadership instead pointed to successful efforts at “reducing layers, increasing ownership and helping reduce bureaucracy.”
That’s not to say Amazon isn’t acknowledging AI as a factor in the layoffs, however. As tech creates demand for businesses to move more quickly, Amazon is “convinced that we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business,” wrote Beth Galetti, senior vice president of people experience and technology at Amazon.
Amazon layoffs: the latest example of a ‘talent remix’?
The Amazon layoffs likely reflect a “strategic ‘talent remix,’ ” say researchers at Gartner. It appears the organization is “reallocating resources to high-priority business areas, rather than [the layoffs] directly resulting from AI-driven productivity gains.”
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