Amazon begins fresh round of layoffs in HR and cloud unit

Amazon on Wednesday began laying off some employees in its cloud service operation and human resources divisions as a part of previously announced job cuts that are expected to affect 9,000 employees.

Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky and human resources head Beth Galetti sent notices to employees in the US, Canada and Costa Rica, whose jobs were being eliminated.

In the note, Selipsky said that the company recently made the "difficult decision to eliminate some roles across Amazon globally, including within AWS, and the conversations with impacted AWS employees started today, with notification messages sent to all impacted employees in the US, Canada, and Costa Rica."

He said, "It is a tough day across our organization. I fully realize the impact on every person and family who is affected."

"We are working hard to treat everyone impacted with respect, and to provide a number of resources and touchpoints to aid in this transition. This also includes packages that include a separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, and external job placement support," Selipsky further wrote in the memo.

In March, CEO Andy Jassy announced the 9,000 job cuts, over the 18,000 eliminations already announced last November and in January. As part of the same, on April 18, Amazon reduced of its workforce by letting go of several employees in its advertising unit to trim costs.

Amid growing anxiety over the potential for a recession, Jassy began aggressively slashing costs across the company. The e-commerce giant froze hiring in its corporate workforce, axed some experimental projects and slowed warehouse expansion.

Jassy said last month that given the uncertain economy and the “uncertainty that exists in the near future," the company has chosen to be more streamlined.

Like other tech companies, including Facebook parent Meta and Google parent Alphabet, Amazon ramped up hiring during the pandemic to meet the demand from homebound Americans that were increasingly buying stuff online to keep themselves safe from the virus.

The AWS experienced massive boost during the pandemic which proved to be a massive boon for Amazon and other cloud providers, as companies, government agencies and schools sped their transition to the cloud.

However, in recent months, both AWS and ads have experienced slowing growth as companies trim their spending amid a challenging economic environment. Some teams within AWS were included in the earlier round of layoffs.

“Given this rapid growth, as well as the overall business and macroeconomic climate, it is critical that we focus on identifying and putting our resources behind our top priorities — those things that matter most to customers and that will move the needle for our business,” Selipsky wrote in the memo. “In many cases this means team members are shifting the projects, initiatives or teams on which they work; however, in other cases it has resulted in these role eliminations.”

"We are focused on continuing to innovate in the areas that matter most to our customers as we help them minimize expense, innovate rapidly, and transform their organizations," Selipsky added.