Amazon Web Services has eliminated several hundred sales, marketing, and tech roles, it said on Wednesday, the latest in a series of job cuts by its parent Amazon.com
The affected staff are a few hundred at Amazon Web Services’ Sales, Marketing, and Global Services division as well as its Physical Storage Technology Group, according to the Cloud computing unit of Amazon, according to Reuters.
We’ve identified a few targeted areas of the organization we need to streamline to continue focusing our efforts on the key strategic areas that we believe will deliver maximum impact,” an Amazon Web Services spokesperson said in a statement on Wednesday.
In the last few months, Amazon has laid off hundreds of employees in its divisions, including its Prime Video service, its healthcare business, and its Alexa voice assistant unit, as major technology companies have continued to cut their workforces over the past two years to 2024.
More than 57,000 workers have been laid off across 229 firms so far this year, according to tracking website Layoffs.fyi.
After the tech industry hired too many people during the pandemic, Amazon laid off more than 27,000 workers between 2022 and 2023.
According to the news website The Information, which first reported the development, the reduction in the sales, marketing, and global services division of 60,000 is likely part of a broader restructuring under sales chief Matt Garman.
Amazon’s Cloud business, which had been hit by a slowdown in growth last year, as a result of the unstable economy, has begun to show signs of stabilisation in February and helped the company beat revenue expectations.
However, Microsoft, which took the early lead in the race to make money from generative artificial intelligence through an investment in ChatGPT maker OpenAI, is challenging its position as the world’s largest cloud provider.
