00:00Amazon is reportedly preparing for corporate layoffs.
00:04The tech giant will cut nearly 14,000 jobs.
00:08According to a Reuters report, it was earlier reported
00:11that Amazon plans to lay off 35,000 corporate staff from Tuesday.
00:17The move is aimed at cutting expenses and correcting over-hiring
00:21that happened during the pandemic when online shopping surged
00:25and Amazon rapidly expanded its workforce.
00:27Amazon has around 1.55 million employees in total,
00:33out of which roughly 350,000 are corporate employees.
00:38The layoffs will reportedly affect several departments,
00:41including Human Resources, Operations, Devices and Services
00:45and Amazon Web Services, the company's cloud business.
00:50Reports say managers in affected teams were asked to undergo training on Monday
00:54on how to inform employees before official emails begin going out on Tuesday.
01:00CEO Andy Jassy has been trying to make the company run faster
01:04by cutting extra management layers.
01:07Earlier this year, he even launched an anonymous complaint line
01:11where employees could report unnecessary processes.
01:14It's received over 1,500 responses and led to more than 450 changes in how Amazon operates.
01:23Amazon CEO Jassy had also said that artificial intelligence
01:27would take over many repetitive office tasks.
01:31Experts believe Amazon is now using those AI tools to boost efficiency,
01:36which could be one reason behind these job cuts.
01:38Reports also suggest that Amazon's strict return-to-office policy
01:43didn't lead to enough resignations.
01:46Some employees who failed to swipe in daily
01:48were marked as having left the company on their own,
01:52saving Amazon from paying severance packages.
01:55Amazon is not alone in downsizing.
01:58According to the website layoffs.fyi,
02:00around 98,000 tech jobs have already been cut this year
02:05across more than 200 companies worldwide.
02:09Amazon's cloud division, AWS, its biggest moneymaker,
02:14earned around $31 billion in the April to June period.
02:18But its growth was slower than Microsoft and Google.
02:22Last week, a 15-hour AWS outage
02:26also affected popular apps like Snapchat and Venmo,
02:29affecting productivity.
02:32Despite the layoffs, Amazon's share price
02:35rose slightly by around 1.5%
02:37as the company prepared to announce its next earnings results.
02:42It also plans to hire 250,000 temporary workers
02:47for the holiday shopping season,
02:49the same amount as last year.
02:52Amazon also carried out smaller rounds of layoffs
02:55in 2023 and 2024.
02:58The move shows how major tech companies
03:00are reshaping their workforce,
03:03balancing the rise of artificial intelligence
03:05with the need to cut costs in a slowing economy.
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