Amazon sparked panic on Tuesday after a mistakenly sent email hinted at fresh layoffs! The internal communication, circulated to a section of employees, appeared to confirm another round of job cuts at the tech giant, triggering confusion across teams.
The email was sent to staff in Amazon Web Services (AWS) and acknowledged ‘organizational changes’, according to a report by CNBC. It was reportedly issued a day before Amazon was expected to begin its next phase of layoffs on Wednesday.
“Changes like this are hard on everyone,” Colleen Aubrey, senior vice-president of applied AI solutions at AWS, wrote in the email seen by CNBC. The message stated that the decisions were difficult but taken thoughtfully to position AWS for future success.
The email also referred to a post by Amazon’s HR chief, Beth Galetti, stating that employees in the US, Canada, and Costa Rica who were impacted had already been notified.
According to Reuters, AWS employees who received the message said internal Slack discussions followed immediately, while a meeting scheduled for Wednesday was cancelled soon after. Amazon has not formally confirmed the timing or scale of the layoffs.
Reuters had earlier reported that Amazon planned to lay off thousands of corporate employees this week, affecting teams across AWS, retail, Prime Video, and human resources. The full scope of these cuts remain unclear.
Also Read: Amazon Layoff: 16,000 Jobs at Risk, India Impact Looms Large
Amazon laid off about 14,000 employees in October as part of a broader plan to reduce its corporate workforce by around 30,000. The planned staff reductions would eliminate close to 10% of corporate employees who work for the company, which has a total global personnel of 1.58 million.
Earlier this week, Amazon announced it will close all Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh physical stores because the company wants to concentrate on grocery delivery and Whole Foods Market. Amazon will turn some locations into Whole Foods stores while the company expands its online grocery delivery services and tests its new supercenter retail format.