Amazon on Wednesday announced that its Web Services division has cut several hundred sales, marketing and tech roles. "We've identified a few targeted areas of the organization we need to streamline," an AWS spokesperson told Reuters in an email response.
The e-commerce giant has laid off hundreds of employees in several divisions including the Prime Video service, healthcare and Alexa voice assistance unit, joining several big tech giants who extended massive job cuts over the past two years, the Reuters report added.
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According to layoffs tracking website Layoffs.fyi, over 57,000 employees have been laid off across 229 companies till now in 2024. Talking about Amazon, it had eliminated more than 27,000 roles in 2022 and 2023.
The job cuts at AWS, the cloud computing arm of Amazon, are said to be a part of a ‘broad reorganisation’ under sales chief Matt Garman, The Information said.
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After suffering a slowdown in growth last year due to an uncertain economy, Amazon's cloud business has been showing signs of stabilisation, helping the company beat quarterly revenue expectations in February, the report added.
Amazon's position as the world's biggest cloud provider is being challenged by rival Microsoft, which has taken an early lead in the race to make money from generative artificial intelligence through an investment in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.
Last month, Ericsson said it will lay off about 1,200 staff in Sweden due to slowdown in the demand for 5G network. The company cited expectations of a “challenging mobile networks market” this year and had laid off 8,500 workers, or 8% of its workforce, last year as well.
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On the other hand, Dell also trimmed its workforce as part of its cost-cutting measures. The company's headcount stood at 1.20 lakh, down from 1.26 lakh last year.
International Business Machines Corp (IBM) announced job cuts without informing about the specific number of layoffs in the company's marketing and communications division.
(With Reuters inputs)
International Business Machines Corp (IBM) announced job cuts without informing about the specific number of layoffs in the company's marketing and communications division.
(With Reuters inputs)