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AWS is cutting several hundreds employees from two different divisions
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The company insisted it's still hiring for thousands of other roles
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AWS isn't the only company to lay off employees in 2024
Snip, snip. That’s the sound of Amazon cutting more jobs.
An Amazon Web Services (AWS) representative told Silverlinings that the company is cutting “several” hundred jobs across its Sales, Marketing and Global Services (SMGS) organization and another “few hundred” from its Physical Stores Technology team. These include staffers from its Training and Certification team.
Geekwire broke the news on Wednesday morning.
“We've identified a few targeted areas of the organization we need to streamline in order to continue focusing our efforts on the key strategic areas that we believe will deliver maximum impact,” the representative told Silverlinings.
“We didn’t make these decisions lightly, and we’re committed to supporting the employees throughout their transition to new roles in and outside of Amazon,” the rep continued. “These decisions are difficult but necessary as we continue to invest, hire and optimize resources to deliver innovation for our customers.”
While the rep didn’t provide specific numbers, a “few” usually means 3 or 4, while “several” is generally understood to be 5 or more. Thus, a reasonable interpretation of would indicate 800-900 employees are getting the chop.
The company gave us the usually layoff song and dance about streamlining and optimizing its operations to eliminate “duplications” and effect strategic changes. The rep proceeded to say it’s still hiring for thousands of positions in other areas. Woof.
Some small consolation: The rep noted Amazon is trying to match impacted employees with other jobs within the company where possible.
That’s good, we guess? Those who can’t be matched will get pay and benefits for the next 60 days (in the U.S., at least), help with their job search and severance eligibility.
On a human level, we’re bummed for the folks who lost their jobs. There’s no way around it – layoffs suck. But the AWS’ move is just the continuation of a steady drumbeat of job cuts that have pounded the tech, telecom and cloud industries in 2023 and into 2024.
Last year was especially brutal, with Amazon cutting a total of 27,000 jobs; Microsoft 16,000; Alphabet 12,000; Nokia 14,000; Dell 13,000; Ericsson 8,500; T-Mobile 5,000; and Dish Network 500.
Here’s a quick of layoffs that have happened so far this year:
- Dish Network cut at least 150 jobs in January and another 53 a month later
- Microsoft laid off 1,900 employees in its gaming division in January
- Google cut hundreds from its Voice Assistant, engineering and hardware teams in January
- Cisco laid off 4,000 employees in February as part of a restructuring move
- Amazon trimmed roles in its Prime Video and MGM Studios divisions
- Swedish telecom vendor Ericsson in March said it would slash 1,200 more jobs
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