Amazon begins job cuts in HR, cloud computing divisions

Amazon announced in March announced that there would be 9,000 job cuts

Amazon started laying off employees in its cloud computing and human resources divisions on Wednesday as it continues to trim down operations. 

Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky and Beth Galetti, senior vice president of people experience and technology, sent separate letters to all PXT and AWS staffers on Wednesday morning saying that notification messages had been sent to all impacted employees in the U.S., Canada, and Costa Rica.

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"It is critical that we focus on identifying and putting our resources behind our top priorities—those things that matter most to customers and that will move the needle for our business," Selipsky told AWS staffers in the note. "In many cases this means team members are shifting the projects, initiatives or teams on which they work; however, in other cases it has resulted in these role eliminations."

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Despite the layoffs, Selipsky said he is "very confident" in its long-term prospects, adding that it is a "leading cloud provider by a wide range of benchmarks." 

Meanwhile, Galetti told PXT staffers in a separate note that "while this moment is hard" they are "building a workplace that helps fuel how Amazonians invent and deliver for customers." 

In both letters, Galetti and Selipsky said the company is following local processes in other regions which "may include time for consultation with employee representative bodies and possibly result in longer timelines to communicate with impacted employees." 

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The move is part of Amazon's plan, announced in March, to cut 9,000 additional roles "mostly" in its cloud computing unit Amazon Web Services and PXT, which handles human resources, as well as its advertising and Twitch teams. 

"Given the uncertain economy in which we reside, and the uncertainty that exists in the near future, we have chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount," CEO Andy Jassy said in a March blog post. 

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Jassy communicated the additional cuts after telling staffers in January that the company was going to cut 18,000 jobs, marking the largest round of layoffs in the company's history.

The latest job cuts bring its total workforce reduction this year to 27,000 – a fraction of its overall global workforce of about 1.5 million.

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