Amazon confirms another round of layoffs, impacting 9,000 people in AWS, Twitch and other units

Amazon has announced another substantial round of layoffs in four months, as the internet giant today revealed that a further 9,000 people are set to lose their jobs.

In a memo published by CEO Andy Jassy this morning, the company said that the cuts will impact those in its AWS cloud unit, Twitch gaming division, advertising, and PXT (experience and technology solutions) arm.

The news comes just a couple of months after Amazon had revealed 18,000 layoffs, the majority of which were set to come from its  PXT and Amazon Stores businesses. That news in itself was an extension on a previous round of layoffs that was originally set to hit around 10,000 people, so today’s reveal shines a light on how Amazon has gone about its headcount reduction efforts — it has been staggered, to say the least.

Indeed, Jassy addressed this very point in today’s memo, noting that rather than rushing to finish its assessments in order to announce all the redundancies in one fell swoop, they elected to take their time and let people know once each team had more or less completed their analysis. Moreover, Jassy suggested that they still haven’t yet concluded the full ins and outs of their cutbacks regarding every role that will go.

“Some may ask why we didn’t announce these role reductions with the ones we announced a couple months ago,” Jassy wrote. “The short answer is that not all of the teams were done with their analyses in the late fall; and rather than rush through these assessments without the appropriate diligence, we chose to share these decisions as we’ve made them so people had the information as soon as possible. The same is true for this note as the impacted teams are not yet finished making final decisions on precisely which roles will be impacted. Once those decisions have been made (our goal is to have this complete by mid to late April), we will communicate with the impacted employees (or where applicable in Europe, with employee representative bodies). We will, of course, support those we have to let go, and will provide packages that include a separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, and external job placement support.”