Amazon Layoffs Continue, This Time Advertising Department

Just a month after Amazon announced that it would be laying off 9000 employees in the coming weeks, the first set of impacted people were notified on Tuesday. The exact number of impacted people is still unknown. On Tuesday morning, Amazon started sending emails to employees in the advertising department.

In its most recent round of layoffs earlier this year, Amazon announced 9,000 job cuts, bringing the total to 27,000 individuals who received a pink slip. This is the largest layoff in the e-commerce platform's history.

According to a CNBC report, Paul Kotas, senior vice president of advertising at Amazon, informed the employees about the decision through an internal memo. It read, "We have meticulously prioritised resources throughout the 2023 planning process to maximise advantages to customers and the long-term viability of our company. For Ads, this process has required reallocating resources by rearranging team members, halting or slowing down specific programmes, or concluding that we lacked the necessary expertise to handle our priorities".

The memo went on to detail, "We have therefore carefully analysed our options and decided on the best course of action, which has led to the termination of several roles within our organisation. The impacted employees will receive full salary and benefits for the following 60 days as part of the severance package. But affected workers in New York and New Jersey will continue to get benefits for 90 days. Additionally, all affected employees will receive outplacement assistance to locate new employment."

In a 2022 letter to shareholders, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had outlined the company's focus on downsizing. According to him, the business had to reassess where to allocate its resources, which finally resulted in the difficult choice to cut 27,000 corporate functions. "As with most leadership teams, we'll continue to assess what we're seeing in our business and move forward adaptably. There are a number of additional changes we've done over the past few months to reduce our overall costs", the Amazon CEO wrote.

Employees in the ad business, cloud computing, Twitch live streaming, and HR teams were impacted by the second wave of job losses while those in the retail, devices, recruiting, and human resources divisions were affected by the first round.