Matt Garman, the Senior Vice President of sales and marketing at AWS, conveyed in an email that the decision to reduce roles across specific Sales, Marketing, and Global Services (SMGS) organizations was a difficult yet necessary one.
Areas of the Company Targeted
Amazon’s restructuring efforts extend beyond its cloud division. The company is scheduled to continue layoffs within its advertising business, as well.
Internal documents from Amazon’s HR department have revealed a surge in employees being put on Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) during a period marked by record layoffs.
The leaks from Walmart Global Tech also shed light on over a dozen ‘major incidents’ reported within the quarter, underlining the broader challenges in the retail-tech landscape.
A spokesperson for Amazon emphasized the strategic rationale behind these decisions, stating, “We’ve identified a few targeted areas of the organization we need to streamline in order to continue focusing our efforts on the key strategic areas that we believe will deliver maximum impact.”
2023 Layoffs
The current layoffs are part of Amazon’s ongoing cost-cutting strategy, which gained momentum in 2023. Last year, the company witnessed its largest workforce reduction in history.
