‘horrendous way to treat people’ say employees as Amazon confirms layoffs

San Francisco, Nov 17: As Big Tech goes through the layoff season, e-commerce giant Amazon has confirmed job losses at the company, saying that in the current macroeconomic environment, some teams are “making adjustments” amid “consolidation of some teams and programmes”.

The company did not reveal the exact number of employees being hit although earlier reports put the number at 10,000 employees or 3 per cent of its workforce.

“As part of our annual operating planning review process, we always look at each of our businesses and what we believe we should change,” a company spokesperson was quoted as saying TechCrunch late on Wednesday.

“As we’ve gone through this, given the current macroeconomic environment (as well as several years of rapid hiring), some teams are making adjustments, which in some cases means certain roles are no longer necessary,” the spokesperson added.

“We don’t take these decisions lightly, and we are working to support any employees who may be affected.”

Senior vice president of Devices and Services, Dave Limp, also wrote an internal post, saying that “after a deep set of reviews, we recently decided to consolidate some teams and programmes”.

“One of the consequences of these decisions is that some roles will no longer be required,” Limp wrote.

“In cases where employees cannot find a new role within the company, we will support the transition with a package that includes a separation payment, transitional benefits, and external job placement support,” Limp added.

The massive job cuts have hit several divisions, especially the Alexa virtual assistant business and the Luna cloud gaming unit.

“Amazon employees were called into meetings with their managers across the country Tuesday, and many were told they had two months to find another job internally or accept severance payment,” the Washington Post earlier reported.

Employees reacted harshly to the decision.

“The truth of the matter is that if the company was more transparent, we wouldn’t have this shitshow. Now you have most of the population wondering if they are next,” a senior company manager told Recode.

“I don’t even know if I want to work for this company any more. This is a horrendous way to treat people,” another Amazon senior manager said.

Meta, Twitter, Salesforce and others have already sacked thousands of employees, with Meta firing more than 11,000 alone.