More employees are being let go by Amazon.
As part of an organizational reform, Amazon cut deep into layers of middle management in several of its customer service departments on Wednesday.
The corporation reportedly laid off one hundred customer support representatives. Many of these managers often worked 12—or 16-hour days, and their laptops were unexpectedly turned off in the middle of the day as a reward for their efforts. According to one insider, the abrupt shutdown of several managers’ workstations throughout the workday was the first sign that anything was wrong.
More than a hundred customer service managers in virtual and in-call Level 5 and Level 6 middle management roles were let go. Many of the affected workers had jobs in either the United States or India.
Amazon MGM Studios and Prime Video were among the departments that lost employees in January. Amazon Health Services employees were let go in February. Developers for the just-cancelled Just Walk Out division and employees in the very lucrative Amazon Web Services sector were both let off in April.
Two “phases” of layoffs will result in 27,000 individuals losing their employment, according to a March 2023 blog post by CEO Andy Jassy. According to Amazon’s most recent annual report, the company has over 1.5 million full—and part-time employees worldwide.
A representative from Amazon said that one goal of the reorganization was to make it easier for consumers to communicate with executives in charge of customer support. While Amazon claimed that less than 1% of its customer service employees were laid off, the exact number of people affected by the cuts in the customer service division’s upper management remains unknown.
The corporation said that the impacted US workers would get severance compensation in addition to 60 days of salary and benefits.
Amazon reported over $143 billion in sales and $10 billion in profit for the first quarter, two weeks prior to the layoffs. Now led by Andy Jassy (CEO), Amazon has reached a plateau that allows them to make massive investments in speculative emerging markets (like AI)) while also producing revenues that move the needle. Part of the reason the firm has gotten to this position is because Jassy was ready to see the most extensive layoffs in Amazon’s history and insisted that his team constantly find ways to cut expenses.
This year, Amazon businesses, including Twitch, Prime Video, and AWS, have laid off hundreds of workers.
