Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing division of Amazon.com, is set to cut hundreds of jobs as part of cost-cutting measures.
These cuts will impact both sales and marketing teams, as well as the team working on technology for Amazon’s physical stores.
- “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,” an Amazon Web Services spokesperson said in a statement on Wednesday.
He added that Amazon will try to find new roles for affected employees.
Recommended reading: Amazon Prime slashes budget for Africa, Middle Eastern original content
More insights
The latest layoffs come about a year after AWS held its largest-ever round of job eliminations, part of a cost-cutting drive that saw Amazon slash 27,000 corporate roles following a pandemic-era hiring boom.
The terminations have continued after those mass layoffs, in recent months falling on the teams behind the voice-activated Alexa assistant, Prime Video and music division, and health care initiatives. Twitch, the company’s internet video streaming subsidiary, also eliminated jobs.
Sales growth at AWS, the largest seller of rented computing power and data storage, slowed to a record low last year as corporate customers cut spending and delayed technology modernization projects.
The cuts to Amazon’s stores technology team come the same week that the company confirmed that it would be removing the Just Walk Out cashier-less shopping system from Amazon Fresh grocery stores in the US, replacing it with an automated grocery cart.
Tech layoffs on the rise
Amazon’s announcement came as the latest in the spree of layoffs being announced by tech companies since the beginning of this year. In January this yea, Microsoft announced plans to lay off 1,900 people across its video-game divisions including at Activision Blizzard, which it recently acquired.
- Thereafter, global Grocery-delivery, Instacart, also announced that it was laying off 250 employees across its operations as part of a restructuring.
- In February, network equipment maker, Cisco, also said it was to laying off more than 4,000 workers, representing 5% of its 85,000 global workforce.
- Meanwhile, after laying off hundreds of staff earlier in the year, Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, recently told the company’s workers to brace for more job cuts as the tech giant continues to implement more cost-cutting measures across its operations.
- Pichai said the layoffs this year were about “removing layers to simplify execution and drive velocity in some areas.” He confirmed what many inside Google have been fearing: that more “role eliminations” are to come.
According to Layoffs.fyi, which tracks tech industry job cuts, more than 70 other tech companies, have let go of almost 32,000 employees so far this year.
