SEATTLE — Amazon began another round of layoffs Wednesday, part of a wave of cuts that began in November and is expected to reach 27,000 roles globally.
Amazon announced the most recent round of cost-cutting in March, telling employees it would eliminate 9,000 roles on top of the 18,000 layoffs announced late last year. CEO Andy Jassy told employees that those affected by the new round of cuts would find out in mid- to late April.
It’s not yet clear how many of the expected 9,000 workers were laid off on Wednesday, or how the job cuts hit Amazon’s Seattle-area workforce.
In this most recent round, Amazon is cutting from its cloud computing division — Amazon Web Services — as well as advertising, human resources and gaming. Already, Twitch has cut 400 jobs and Amazon laid off about 100 people from other gaming divisions. On Wednesday, Amazon began notifying workers who have been laid off from AWS and its human resources team, which Amazon calls People, Experience and Technology.
“It is a tough day across our organization,” Adam Selipsky, CEO of AWS, wrote to employees in a note shared with The Seattle Times.
“Both the size of our business and the size of our team have grown significantly over recent years, driven by customer demand for the cloud and for the unique value AWS provides,” Selipsky wrote. “Given this rapid growth, as well as the overall business and macroeconomic climate, it is critical that we focus on identifying and putting our resources behind our top priorities.”
That shift has led to many workers switching projects, initiatives or teams, he continued.
Amazon said workers who were laid off will have a 60-day nonworking transition period, a severance package and help finding external roles.
“While this moment is hard, I remain energized by the important work that lies ahead of us,” Amazon’s head of human resources Beth Galetti wrote in a note to her team. “Together, we are building a workplace that helps fuel how Amazonians invent and deliver for customers.”
Employees who were laid off in this most recent round of cuts found out via email Wednesday morning.
Leading up to that email there was trepidation among Amazon’s ranks as they waited to see who would be cut, said one employee from Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud computing division, who was laid off Wednesday.
That employee, who is based in the Seattle area and asked to remain anonymous while looking for new employment, said that uncertainty is always a part of working in tech.
Workers in the industry “always have to be prepared to be looking for the new, next thing,” they said. “Obviously I would prefer to still be employed at Amazon. But at the end of the day, these sort of things happen and this is the risk we take in tech, by being in tech.”
Based on internal conversations, that employee said it was clear the layoffs were not related to performance but were instead a response to a shift in the market. Now, they’re focused on what they would like to do next while also thinking about the people still at Amazon who are left to “pick up the pieces.”
One recruiter who was laid off Wednesday and asked to remain anonymous to protect their severance said the company followed up with an exit call shortly after the email notifying workers of cuts was sent.
After watching some “flaws” with how Amazon approached communication around the layoffs and next steps in the past, the former employee said they felt Amazon was prepared this time around.
Amazon shut down internal and external job postings following the start of layoffs and redirected their internal efforts toward helping laid-off workers find new roles at the company, the recruiter said.
“They tried to save as many as possible,” the recruiter said. “There were teams that were put together specifically to try to match up those folks to positions that were open.”
Still, morale at the company has been low, they said. After Amazon announced in March that the next round of layoffs would include its human resources department, they said they woke up each morning worried that an email might come in notifying them they had been cut.
“You’re not sleeping through the night. You’re wanting to do things but letting people know, ‘Hey if I’m not here next week, it’s not because I flaked on the project,’” the recruiter said. “It’s like the ax waiting to fall.”
Like the former AWS worker, the recruiter also pinned the blame on the economy, not the company. “There’s a bigger picture,” they said. “This isn’t just happening at Amazon.”
Meanwhile, Amazon also announced Wednesday it is discontinuing Amazon Halo, a wearable fitness tracker similar to devices like a Fitbit or Apple Watch. Amazon launched Halo and a companion app in 2020 and positioned the service as a way for customers to get better insight into their own habits to guide health improvements.
Since then, the company continued to build out the product line and introduced new devices as recently as last year. In September, it introduced Halo Rise, a sleep tracker that learns breathing patterns and senses room conditions to help users optimize sleep.
On Wednesday, the company told customers it would stop supporting Amazon Halo at the end of July.
“We are incredibly proud of the invention and hard work that went into building Halo on behalf of our customers, and our priorities are taking care of our customers and supporting our employees,” Amazon wrote in a blog post Wednesday.
The decision will lead to layoffs, the post said. A spokesperson for Amazon confirmed those layoffs are a part of the 9,000 the company already announced.
Amazon will refund customers for purchases made in the last 12 months, it said Wednesday.
Along with Amazon Halo, the company has ended several projects in the last year as it evaluates each part of its sprawling business. Amazon has closed its physical bookstores, scaled back expansion of its brick and mortar grocery business and ended several experimental projects, including some robotics and virtual reality ventures.
In health care, Amazon ended its own service — Amazon Care — at the end of 2022 after determining it was not the right long-term solution for customers. Around the same time, Amazon announced it would acquire primary care provider One Medical.
Amazon lost $2.7 billion in 2022, a year marked by drastic cost-cutting measures across the business. The company attributes much of that loss to its investment in electric vehicle startup Rivian.
Jassy told shareholders in a letter this month that Amazon would “continue to evaluate what we’re seeing in our business and proceed adaptively.”
