Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services
- Amazon announces new layoffs as part of a broader reset by the e-commerce and cloud giant.
- The company previously cut 14,000 jobs in October, citing cultural and efficiency shifts.
- CEO Andy Jassy is pursuing a cultural reset focused on stripping away bureaucracy.
Amazon said it is eliminating 16,000 corporate employees, marking its second round of mass job cuts since October, when it shed 14,000 roles.
The latest reductions were announced by Amazon’s senior vice president of people experience and technology, Beth Galetti, who described the move as part of efforts to cut back on bureaucracy inside the company.
“As I shared in October, we’ve been working to strengthen our organization by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy,” wrote Galetti in a memo that was shared on Amazon’s blog. “While many teams finalized their organizational changes in October, other teams did not complete that work until now.”
The cuts underscore Amazon’s push to operate more efficiently as it reshapes the organization amid rapid advances in AI. While the company initially linked the October layoffs to AI-driven changes, CEO Andy Jassy later said those reductions were more about cultural fit than cost savings or automation.
On Tuesday, some Amazon employees received a calendar invitation regarding job cuts that had apparently been sent early.
Earlier this week, Amazon also announced it would shutter its Amazon Go and Fresh stores, citing its failure to create a “truly distinctive customer experience with the right economic model.”
Amazon employs more than 1.5 million people globally, though its corporate workforce represents a relatively small share of that total, at roughly 350,000 employees.
In recent years, Amazon has trimmed management layers, tightened spending, overhauled performance systems, and ordered most corporate employees to return to the office five days a week.
That cultural reset accelerated after the pandemic, when Amazon’s explosive growth slowed. The company moved to rein in costs by shutting down unprofitable initiatives and shrinking what executives described as a bloated workforce. Last year, Jassy said efficiency gains from AI would eventually reduce Amazon’s head count.
Amazon’s moves mirror a broader trend across Big Tech, where companies have cut thousands of jobs while ramping up AI investment.
Microsoft said last year it would eliminate about 15,000 positions, with CEO Satya Nadella telling employees the company needed to stay focused on its AI transformation. Meta has also made AI-driven cuts, telling employees in its risk organization last year that their roles were being replaced by automation.
Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at ekim@businessinsider.com or Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp at 650-942-3061. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.
Â
