After Twitter and Meta announced massive job cuts, e-commerce firm Amazon becomes the latest tech firm to start with a layoff exercise in its corporate ranks that will affect around 260 workers at present.
In a notification, the regional authorities in California on Tuesday said it would lay off about 260 workers at various facilities that employ data scientists, software engineers and other corporate workers, according to the news agency AP report. These job cuts would impact the employees starting next year from January 17.
It’s not clear how many more layoffs are expected beyond the ones confirmed through California’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, also known as WARN, which requires companies to provide 60 days’ notice if they have 75 or more full-time or part-time workers. Amazon has more than 1.5 million workers globally mostly comprised of hourly workers.
In the note shared by the devices and services team on its website, the team’s senior vice president David Limp confirmed that the company is consolidating teams and programs. He said the company will work towards providing support including assistance in finding new roles. If an employee cannot find a new role within the company, Limp said Amazon will provide a severance payment, external job placement support and what he called transitional benefits.
Set back for Amazon post Covid-19
The online retail giant just like other tech and social media giants witnessed sizable profits during the Covid-19 pandemic with homebound shoppers spending more online. However, the revenue growth declined as the worst of the pandemic eased and consumers relied less on e-commerce.
The Seattle-based company witnessed two consecutive losses this year on the back of write-downs of the value of its stock owing to its investment in electric vehicle start-up Rivian Automotive. However, it returned to profitability during the third quarter, but investors remained sceptical about its weaker-than-expected revenue and dim projections for the current quarter given the holiday shopping season does good for retailers.
Retail giant slows down on projects
Aiming to trim costs, the company has already started curbing some of its projects — including subsidiary fabric.com, Amazon Care, and the cooler-size home delivery robot Scout. The company also scaled back its physical footprint by either delaying or canceling plans to occupy some new warehouses across the country. And Amazon Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky has said the company was preparing for what could be a slower growth period and would be careful about hiring in the near future.