Amazon appears to have tripped over its own layoff script. On Tuesday, some Amazon Web Services staffers received an email that referenced a new round of layoffs that had occurred—a day before the company officially announced it was cutting 16,000 positions. The BBC reports the email that went out erroneously—signed by Colleen Aubrey, a senior VP at AWS—was included with a calendar invite sent by an executive assistant.
It referenced US, Canada, and Costa Rica employees as having been already informed and invited recipients to a Wednesday team-wide meeting; the meeting was rapidly canceled. The invite's title read "Send project Dawn email," thought to be Amazon's code name for the job cuts. Reuters viewed the email and says it read in part, "Changes like this are hard on everyone. These decisions are difficult and are made thoughtfully as we position our organization and AWS for future success."
In October, Amazon shed about 14,000 positions as part of a push to trim roughly 30,000 corporate jobs—almost 10% of its white-collar workforce, but a sliver of its 1.58 million total employees. Reuters had on Friday reported that sizable additional cuts were expected this week. NBC News reports that on Wednesday, a memo sent to employees by senior VP of people experience Beth Galetti read, "The reductions we are making today will impact approximately 16,000 roles across Amazon, and we're again working hard to support everyone whose role is impacted."
The email continued, "That starts with offering most US-based employees 90 days to look for a new role internally." Galetti said the cuts would "strengthen our organization by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy." It did not explicitly reference AI as being a driver of the cuts.
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