Written by Samah Labib
Tuesday, March 21, 2023 11:00 PM
Send Amazon Prime Andy Jassy’s memo to employees indicates that the company will cut another 9,000 jobs in the “next few weeks,” indicating an expanded scope of layoffs. The cuts will mainly affect divisions of Twitch, and cloud computing such as Amazon Web Services .
According to the letter, the CEO also warns that final cuts are not likely to be completed until mid-to-late April, and that Amazon will not notify affected workers until that point, according to the engadget report.
The expanded layoffs follow a “second phase” of operational planning focused on cutting costs, says Jassy. Some teams weren’t ready for the first round of layoff announcements in November, and the company wanted to announce early decisions to provide information “as soon as possible,” he adds. Jassy promises the online retailer severance pay, transitional health insurance coverage, and help finding jobs elsewhere.
Amazon confirmed the memo’s existence to Engadget following the CNBC report. As before, Jassy attributes the cuts to an “uncertain economy” and lingering doubts regarding performance in the near future. The company wants to be “more streamlined” while still having the resources to invest in better experiences as well. claims the executive officer.
Rumors emerged that the company would lay off 10,000 employees last fall, but the company announced that it would cut 18,000 jobs in January, and for the time being most of the cuts focused on retail and employment. Last year, Amazon closed some of its physical stores and canceled some business units while the brand benefited from the transformation. Online shopping at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic has experienced disruption as people revert to pre-pandemic habits.
Amazon isn’t the only big tech company announcing layoffs this year, or even the only company planning deeper cuts. Meta said this month it will shed 10,000 more workers following it cut 11,000 jobs in the fall.
However, Amazon is now laying off workers more aggressively than others. It’s also worth noting that Twitch is part of the layoffs and the streaming service thrived during the early pandemic, but Streamlabs and Stream Hatchet estimate that viewership has been in steady decline since the spring of 2021. There simply isn’t as much demand for Twitch as it was when people were stuck at home.
It is worth noting that Twitch is a live broadcast platform for video games through which interaction can be made between users, and it can also broadcast programs, series and movies, and it is affiliated with Amazon.
