Amazon plans to lay off 10,000+ staff, according to The New York Times. The decision, if confirmed, would follow disappointing Q3 earnings that wiped $200 billion from Amazon’s share price last month.
It was not immediately clear if AWS would be affected but as the company's cash cow it seems likely that it will be at least partially shielded, if not immune from the extensive planned staffing reductions.
The Amazon layoffs would come as the company has committed $60 billion in capital expenditure this fiscal year, including “an approximately $10 billion year-over-year increase in technology infrastructure.”
That’s “primarily to support the rapid growth, innovation and continued expansion of our AWS footprint.”
See also: AWS customers slam on the brakes
Amazon’s Alexa unit was reported to be a particular target, as was human resources and its retail unit.
The Amazon layoffs news comes as Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky told investors that the company had “generated over $1 billion in operations cost improvements” in the quarter, “driven by higher leverage of our fixed cost base and continued productivity improvements in our fulfillment and transportation networks.”
He said: “This represents a solid improvement in productivity quarter-over-quarter, though not quite as much as we had planned. We are encouraged by the progress made during the quarter, but we recognize there's still a lot of opportunity to continue to improve productivity and drive cost efficiencies throughout our networks.”
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The Amazon layoffs, if confirmed, would follow a decision to axe 11,000 employees by Meta.
Olsavksy added last month that the “macroeconomic environment remains challenging worldwide.”
The Amazon CFO added: “The continuing impacts of broad-scale inflation, heightened fuel prices and rising energy costs have impacted our sales growth as consumers assess their purchasing power and organizations of all sizes evaluate their technology and advertising spend.”
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
