These layoffs are said to mostly impact Amazon’s cloud unit (AWS), the Advertising department, the People Experience and Technology Solutions team (PXT), and the Twitch gaming division.

The news comes just months after the big tech company let go of around 18,000 staff between November last year and January 2023.

“The uncertain economy in which we reside, and the uncertainty that exists in the near future” have been stated as the reasons underpinning both rounds of layoffs.

Andy Jassy, Amazon’s CEO, referenced Amazon’s staggered layoff approach in today’s memo.

“Some may ask why we didn’t announce these role reductions with the ones we announced a couple months ago. 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 wrote.

He also stated that the final decision of which roles are being axed hasn’t yet been made; it’s slated to be completed by mid-late April.

“The same is true for this note as the impacted teams are not yet finished making final decisions on precisely which roles will be impacted. Once those decisions have been made (our goal is to have this complete by mid to late April), we will communicate with the impacted employees (or where applicable in Europe, with employee representative bodies). We will, of course, support those we have to let go, and will provide packages that include a separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, and external job placement support.”

“This was a difficult decision, but one that we think is best for the company long term,” he also said.

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The Latest in a Long Line…

Google, Meta, Microsoft, Twitter, IBM, Dell, Spotify, Zoom, NetApp, PayPal, Yahoo, and GitHub have all announced major global layoffs – but the reasons range dramatically.

Google and Microsoft are both participating in the AI race, as each company competes with their new chatbots.

Both companies directly addressed their pivot to prioritise AI innovation – staff in other sectors took the hit after each team hired a surplus during the pandemic.

Meta’s announcement was not so specific, but the company’s staff expected cuts as earnings dropped. The company was affected by changing privacy policies which impacted their ad selling capabilities – new GDPR rulings are set to majorly impact the use of personalised ads on Facebook and Instagram, and Zuckerberg said that those in the Family of Apps and Reality departments would be hit the hardest. More recently, the Big Tech company announced a further cut of around 10,000 staff in March 2023.

Layoffs at Yahoo! were largely the result of restructuring in its advertising departments so it would not be in direct competition with market dominators like Meta and Google.

Dell’s lay-offs were directly linked to a decrease in hardware purchases – most of their revenue came from personal computer sales, and with many returning to the office, these plummeted.

Similarly, Zoom announced it was cutting 15% of it’s workforce, likely driven by the return to the office and the advancement of other video conferencing services that are aligned with other services, like Microsoft Teams.

Spotify and PayPal’s announcements were much less specific, as neither company announced why they were firing or what departments would be most affected.

Twitter had a much more publicly contentious round of layoffs. About 50% of its global staff were fired, with some even locked out of their offices. Elon Musk’s infamous purchase of the company has exhausted the tech news cycle, and the firings came due to a massive loss in revenue as advertisers backed out of the platform.

IBM’s layoffs were a different story – two spin offs from the company meant IBM was effectively releasing workers through the layoffs. The company was actually performing quite well and intends to continue hiring during the progress.

For many companies, the tidal turn is simply a reflection of changing times after the pandemic – demand for tech was high across the board during the pandemic, and many giants took the opportunity to vacuum up talent. Now, the shift in the economy has left tech companies scrambling to make up for lost demand, and often they’ve turned to letting go their most valuable asset: people.

“The tech sector has pivoted from ‘the great resignation’ to ‘the great redundancy’ in the space of only a few months,” Martin Taylor, Co-Founder and Deputy CEO at Content Guru said. “Bullish post-Covid hiring collided with a tough macroeconomic outlook, just as the well of cheap investment cash dried up under the heat of interest rate hikes.”

Many tech workers were attracted to big companies due to a perception of stability as well as more benefits and larger salaries.

“However, given the size and scale of the layoffs, people are now doubting the stability of the largest players and are looking to up-and-coming smaller firms rather than the Big Tech monoliths,” Laurent Descout, CEO of Neo commented.

To read further commentary on the impact of the recent tech layoffs, click here.

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