Amazon announced on Wednesday that it will cut 16,000 corporate positions, marking the company’s second major layoff in the past four months.
The layoffs represent the latest large-scale workforce reduction since October, when Amazon cut 14,000 roles.
Internal Slack messages reportedly revealed that those being hit by the latest round of layoff are employees in the US, UK, and India.
According to those messages, employees in US, UK and India have been notified about the job cuts, Business Insider reported, adding that the affected groups span multiple areas of the business.
Who’s getting hit
Those affected in the latest layoff include teams within Amazon Web Services, such as the Bedrock AI cloud service, the Redshift cloud data warehouse, and the ProServe consulting unit, along with retail-focused teams like the Prime subscription business and the last-mile Delivery Experience organisation, the report said.
Many employees impacted by the cuts who posted in an internal Slack channel asking for job leads were working in software engineering positions.
Amazon said it is giving “most” US-based employees a 90-day window to look for another role within the company. Workers who do not secure a new position, or choose not to pursue one, will be eligible for assistance that includes severance pay and continued health insurance coverage.
While the company employs more than 1.5 million people worldwide, its corporate staff makes up a much smaller portion of that figure, totaling about 350,000 employees.
Details of the planned layoffs may have surfaced prematurely after a calendar invitation sent on behalf of one of Amazon’s top executives appeared to inadvertently reveal information about the cuts.