Amazon to Lay Off 14,000 Workers In Latest Job Cuts… With More to Come

Tech giant Amazon has announced plans to lay off 14,000 workers in a new memo sent to affected employees today. This comes after an initial report from Reuters revealed that Amazon was allegedly planning to lay off up to 30,000 workers this week.

These layoffs account for 4% of the company’s 350,000 office workers. Additionally, as reported by The New York Times, these layoffs could be related to the tech giant’s continuously aggressive AI spending. 

Monumental Layoffs

According to a source close to the matter, Amazon is reportedly looking to cut billions of dollars in costs, especially in operations. Targets to downsize 10-15% of certain teams have allegedly been enforced, and this time, more senior roles like directors are expected to be hit harder than they were in previous layoff rounds. 

As aforementioned, initial reports from Monday, 27th initially stated that up to 30,000 white collar workers could be affected – marking one of the biggest potential tech layoffs in history – but Beth Galetti, Amazon’s SVP of People Experience and Technology, wrote that the tech giant is targeting “an overall reduction in our corporate workforce of approximately 14,000 roles.”

Additionally, although 14,000 roles have been cited in this particular round of layoffs, the tech giant has reported that these will not be the last. In fact, Beth wrote that although hiring would continue “in strategic areas”, the company would also be “finding additional places we can remove layers, increase ownership, and realize efficiency gains.”

The last time Amazon engaged in mass layoffs of this size was at the end of 2022, with cuts that totalled 27,000 positions in total after a period of intense hiring during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

This year so far, nearly 130,000 tech employees across 218 companies have been laid off.

AI Spending Strikes Again

Once again, these tech layoffs are being hesitantly attributed, or at least in conjunction with rising AI spending, and Amazon has recently increased its spending on AI data centers. The cost of these, among other capital expenditures, is expected to exceed $120B this year – up nearly 50% from last year. 

In the official memo, references to reducing a layer of “bureaucracy” and shifting resources to other investment areas like AI were mentioned. 

Earlier this year, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company’s corporate workforce will shrink in the coming years as it adopts more generative artificial intelligence tools and agents, and this seems to now be in its first stages. 

Summary 

AI-driven layoffs are on the rise, and whether these layoffs are solely attributed to AI or are a guise for something else, tech employees are facing some of the most uncertain working conditions in the history of their careers. 

At Salesforce Ben, we will be reporting on tech layoffs across the industry as they happen, so be sure to check back.

Have you or anyone you know been affected by these layoffs? Reach out anonymously or not at tips@salesforceben.com.