Amazon Cuts 9,000 Jobs in Latest Round of Layoffs

Amazon is planning to cut 9,000 more jobs in its latest round of layoffs, with employees from AWS, Twitch, advertising and human resources being the most affected.  

The layoffs were made in an effort to streamline costs and headcount amid the “uncertain economy.” 

 “The overriding tenet of our annual planning this year was to be leaner while doing so in a way that enables us to still invest robustly in the key long-term customer experiences that we believe can meaningfully improve customers’ lives and Amazon as a whole,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy explained in acompany memo.  

The CEO also explained why the company had not announced the layoffs earlier this year. “The short answer is that not all of the teams were done with their analyses in the late fall, and rather than rush through these assessments without the appropriate diligence, we chose to share these decisions as we’ve made them, so people had the information as soon as possible” Jassy explained.  

While the company is still unsure on which roles will be impacted, Jassy said that their goal is to finalize this by mid to late April before communicating with the impacted employees. 

Amazon’s latest round of layoffs comes after the eCommerce giant had laid off 18,000 workers from late 2022 and early January. In the first two rounds, hardware and services, human resources and retail teams were among the departments impacted. 

Layoffs impact 400 employees at Twitch 

Among the 9,000, around 400 employees from Twitch were affected according to a Twitch blog post.  

New Twitch CEO Dan Clancy explained that, like many companies, Twitch had been affected by the current macroeconomic environment, with user and revenue growth not meeting the company’s expectations. “In order to run our business sustainably, we’ve made the very difficult decision to shrink the size of our workforce,” Clancy wrote.  

“We take this responsibility incredibly seriously and sometimes need to make extremely hard decisions to ensure we protect our business in order for Twitch to be around for a long time,” he added. 

The layoff news also comes days after Emmett Shear, Twitch’s CEO, announced his resignation to take on an advisory role.