Amazon has laid off around 16,000 employees as part of a fresh round of organisational restructuring, the company confirmed on January 28. The job cuts span multiple teams and geographies, including Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Beth Galetti, Amazon’s Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology, said the reductions were part of ongoing efforts to streamline the organisation.
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Among those affected is an Indian-origin AWS engineer who shared a post on LinkedIn after being notified of the layoff.
AWS engineer details work on core cloud systems
In his LinkedIn post, the engineer said he had spent nearly six years at AWS working on key infrastructure services, including the Lambda Data Plane and CloudWatch Logs.
“Like many talented colleagues across the industry, I’ve recently received some difficult news and have been impacted by the layoffs at Amazon,” he wrote. “I am incredibly proud of my 5.7 years at AWS building the backbone of the cloud.”
He added that his role gave him direct exposure to large-scale distributed systems and core cloud architecture.
Amazon informed affected employees of the layoffs via email, according to screenshots shared online.
Company statement on layoffs
In a statement released on January 28, Galetti said the latest cuts follow internal restructuring that began last year.
“We're making additional organizational changes across Amazon that will impact some of our teammates,” she said. “As I shared in October, we've been working to strengthen our organization by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy.”
Galetti said many teams completed restructuring in October, while others finalised changes more recently.
“The reductions we are making today will impact approximately 16,000 roles across Amazon,” she said.
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Support for impacted employees
Amazon said most US-based employees affected by the layoffs will be given up to 90 days to apply for other roles within the company. Timelines may differ in other countries based on local regulations.
Employees who do not transition internally will receive severance pay, health insurance benefits where applicable, and outplacement support, the company said.
The latest round of layoffs adds to a series of workforce reductions across the global technology sector over the past two years.
