Amazon has begun the next stage of cuts, which in total will have to affect 18 thousand people. It is unknown how many employees will be cut this time and whether there will be another “round”. According to the US labor industry regulator, 2,300 people have already been laid off in the US.
The company sent notifications by mail to the dismissed from the USA, Canada and Costa Rica, there were no personal meetings with field managers or HR managers, Insider writes, citing sources at Amazon. Some were immediately turned off their work computers and passes.
The notice said that the reduced employees would also have to download the company’s mail service and its application for calls to a personal device. This way the company will be able to hold “informational” meetings with them and answer questions. Employees from China will receive notifications and calls after the Chinese New Year.
The reduced employees will receive a salary within 60 days from the dismissal, along with all bonuses due to them. Everyone is also entitled to severance pay, the amount of which will depend on the time worked in the company, as well as “transitional benefits” and assistance with finding vacancies in other firms.
In addition, Amazon has sent explanatory letters to all retail departments. In them, she thanked those who were leaving her and reminded them that the decision was forced, since the market was faced with economic uncertainty, but business must find ways to develop in new conditions.
It will be painful for us to say goodbye to talented colleagues, but the cuts, although rare for us, are a necessary step on the way to reducing costs. This way we will be able to continue investing in the assortment, low prices and fast delivery — all that customers love us for.

Doug Harrington, Head of Amazon’s International Retail Department
To be more courteous to those who have been cut, Amazon has also temporarily suspended some corporate processes, Insider writes. For example, the cloud division of Amazon Web Services asked the team to “freeze social media activity” and postpone some Twitch broadcasts in order to “show empathy to the victims of layoffs.”
AWS management also called for more careful monitoring of comments from customers and flagging anything that “should be removed as inappropriate or offensive in light of recent events.” Exceptions were told to coordinate directly with the vice-presidents of the department.
The company also postponed part of the recruiting tasks on January 18 and 19 — “as a sign of respect” for those who lost their jobs. On the same days, development engineers in Amazon retail departments around the world were banned from publishing service updates and product releases.

Source: Vox
In November 2022, the NYT reported that Amazon would lay off 10,000 people. First of all, the cuts were supposed to affect the departments working on “smart” devices, now — the retail and human resources departments.

The fact that 18 thousand employees will be fired at once, told the WSJ in early January. The company confirmed this. As of September 2022, it employed 1.5 million people.
Other IT sector firms are also trying to control costs amid financial problems. Meta* announced cuts of 11 thousand employees, Microsoft — 10 thousand. In Salesforce, it was about 7000 employees, in Robinhood — about 23% of the staff, on Twitter — about 50%, in Oracle — about “hundreds” of people. According to CNBC, in 2022, large tech companies severed labor relations with more than 60 thousand people.