Amazon said that they don't need so many people due to AI. We have already seen companies telling engineers to use AI project management tools,
Could Amazon be doing the same internally?
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Amazon just announced 14,000 layoffs while sitting on $100 billion in cash.
Is this the new playbook for the AI era that companies are implementing to survive and/or thrive.
Or maybe it's just a way for them to make their balance sheets look pretty for the investors with all the money they've dumped into AI.
Amazon's CEO explained it clearly: "When you add a lot of people, you end up with middle managers who want to put their fingerprint on everything.
Full post:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/stepania_amazon-just-announced-14000-layoffs-while-activity-7308144807313371137-YZMl
Key point summary:
Amazon’s mass layoffs announced last month hit engineers the hardest, according to state filings.
Nearly 40% of the roughly 4,700 positions eliminated across Washington, New York, New Jersey and California were engineering jobs.
Video games, advertising and AI search were also significantly impacted
https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/amazon-exec-explains-layoff-california-21129467.php
In California, Amazon filed WARNs, which are generally required in the event of mass job cuts, for seven cities: Sunnyvale (391 layoffs), Irvine (333), Palo Alto (176), Culver City (152), San Diego (145), Santa Monica (130) and Santa Clara (76). It adds up to 1,403 cuts statewide — it’s unclear how the overall cuts might be affecting subsidiaries. (Amazon also owns Audible, Twitch, Goodreads, Whole Foods, Zoox and Ring.)
Who are these laid-off workers? Software development engineers make up the largest category, with hundreds of cuts listed across the documents. Amazon is also shedding recruiters, business analysts, marketers and managers. The layoffs in Irvine and San Diego, where Amazon has video game studios, include dozens of game designers and game artists.
This sheds some light on how affected SWEs were by this layoff in California at least. Not sure about other locations. The total layoff number is 14000
https://news.abplive.com/business/amazon-layoffs-tech-firm-to-cut-14-000-manager-positions-by-2025-ceo-andy-jassy-1722182
Amazon is reportedly planning to reduce 14,000 managerial positions by early next year in a bid to save $3 billion annually, according to a Morgan Stanley report. This initiative is part of CEO Andy Jassy's strategy to boost operational efficiency by increasing the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15 per cent by March 2025.
This initiative from the tech giant is designed to streamline decision-making and eliminate bureaucratic hurdles, as reported by Bloomberg.
Jassy highlighted the importance of fostering a culture characterised by urgency, accountability, swift decision-making, resourcefulness, frugality, and collaboration, with the goal of positioning Amazon as the world’s largest startup.
How do you think this will impact the company ?
Amazon plans to cut 14,000 corporate jobs—its largest layoffs in years—explicitly to invest in AI. HR chief Beth Galetti called AI "the most transformative technology since the internet," while CEO Andy Jassy warned months ago that the company would need "fewer people" as AI drives efficiency.
This isn't just Amazon's story; it's a warning. White-collar roles once seen as safe are vanishing first, replaced by systems that prioritize speed over human judgment. The result? Growing unemployment, skill gaps, and dangerous over-reliance on AI.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/amazon-layoffs-thousands-corporate-artificial-intelligence-rcna240155
Amazon said Tuesday that it will lay off about 14,000 corporate employees, marking the latest cuts in the company’s multi-year effort to rein in costs.
In a blog post, the company wrote that the layoffs are being carried out to help make the company leaner and less bureaucratic, while it looks to invest in “our biggest bets” including generative artificial intelligence.
“This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and altogether new ones),” Beth Galetti, senior vice president of people experience and technology at Amazon, wrote. “We’re 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 businesses.”
The layoffs are expected to ultimately be the largest corporate job cuts in Amazon’s history, CNBC previously reported. Reuters reported the cuts could affect as many as 30,000 employees, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Amazon is the nation’s second-largest private employer, with more than 1.54 million staffers globally as of the end of the second quarter. That figure is primarily made up of its warehouse workforce.
It has roughly 350,000 corporate and tech employees, meaning the 14,000 job cuts represent about 4% of that segment of its workforce.
The company indicated that it will continue to lay off employees in the coming year, even as it plans to keep hiring in “key strategic areas.”
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in June that the company’s workforce would shrink further as a result of it embracing generative AI, telling staffers that it “will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs.”
Jassy, who took the helm from Jeff Bezos in 2021, has been on a campaign to slash costs across the company over the past few years. Amazon laid off 27,000 employees between 2022 and 2023, and job reductions have continued since then, though at a smaller scale.
The company has axed unprofitable initiatives, while committing to invest about $100 billion this year in AI development.
Jassy been trying to overhaul Amazon’s corporate culture and operate like the “world’s largest startup” as it looks to stay competitive. Last September, as part of a mandate requiring corporate employees to work in the office five days a week, he set a goal to flatten organizations across Amazon by the first quarter of this year.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/28/amazon-layoffs-corporate-workers-ai.html
Amazon Blog post: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-workforce-reduction
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/21/amazon-cut-thousands-of-engineers-in-its-record-layoffs-filings-show.html
Edit: Update link to remove AMP
Amazon said it would cut 14,000 corporate staffers this year in a mass layoff aimed at readying the company for wide adoption of AI technology.
Amazon has over 350,000 corporate employees, according to a 2024 survey filed to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, so the cuts represent about 4% of the company’s overall staff.
Reuters, which on Monday first reported Amazon would lay off staff, said the job cuts could ultimately reach 30,000.
Amazon’s 14,000-plus layoffs announced last month touched almost every piece of the company’s sprawling business, from cloud computing and devices to advertising, retail and grocery stores. But one job category bore the brunt of cuts more than others: engineers.
Documents filed in New York, California, New Jersey and Amazon’s home state of Washington showed that nearly 40% of the more than 4,700 job cuts in those states were engineering roles. The data was reported by Amazon in Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, filings to state agencies.
The figures represent a segment of the total layoffs announced in October. Not all data was immediately available because of differences in state WARN reporting requirements.
In announcing the steepest round of cuts in its 31-year history, Amazon joined a growing roster of tech companies that have slashed jobs this year even as cash piles have mounted and profits soared. In total, there have been almost 113,000 job cuts at 231 tech companies, according to Layoffs.fyi, continuing a trend that began in 2022 as businesses readjusted to life after the Covid pandemic.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has been on a multiyear mission to transform the company’s corporate culture into one that operates like what he calls “the world’s largest startup.” He’s looked to make Amazon leaner and less bureaucratic by urging staffers to do more with less and cutting organizational bloat.
Amazon is expected to carry out further job reductions in January, CNBC previously reported.
The company said it’s also shifting resources to invest more in artificial intelligence. The technology is already poised to reshape Amazon’s white-collar workforce, with Jassy predicting in June that its corporate head count will shrink in the coming years alongside efficiency gains from AI.
Human resources chief Beth Galetti, in her memo announcing the layoffs, focused on the importance of innovating, which the company will now have to do with fewer people, specifically engineers.
“This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before,” Galetti wrote. “We’re 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.”
Amazon said in a statement that AI is not the driver behind the vast majority of the job cuts, and that the bigger goal was to reduce bureaucracy and emphasize speed.
Jassy said on Amazon’s earnings call last month that the cuts were in response to a “culture” issue inside the company, spurred in part by an extended hiring spree that left it with “a lot more layers” and slower decision-making.
The layoffs impacted a mix of software engineer levels, but SDE II roles, or mid-level employees, were disproportionately affected, the WARN filings show.
The AI boom is making software development jobs harder to come by as companies adopt coding assistants or so-called vibe coding platforms from vendors like Cursor, OpenAI and Cognition. Amazon has released its own competitor called Kiro.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/21/amazon-cut-thousands-of-engineers-in-its-record-layoffs-filings-show.html
My friend from Amazon told me how she saw an entire team, including their manager, get laid off right in front of her eyes — all within seconds. The way they had to leave the office was honestly heartbreaking.
These layoffs are massive; entire orgs are being wiped out. The testing teams in Q3 and Q4 were the first to go. They collected company laptops on the spot, and that was it.
It’s rough out there right now.
Miserable existence
Amazon Layoffs: Amazon is reportedly planning to reduce 14,000 managerial positions by early next year in a bid to save $3 billion annually, according to a Morgan Stanley report. This initiative is part of CEO Andy Jassy's strategy to boost operational efficiency by increasing the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15 per cent by March 2025.