SINGAPORE— Amazon.com Inc. has initiated a process of laying off employees in its cloud services division.
This action is expected to impact 9,000 employees globally, including those in the Singapore office.
According to Bloomberg’s report, Amazon Web Services (AWS) personnel in the US, Canada and Costa Rica whose jobs were informed about their job termination on Wednesday (26 Apr).
Although AWS is the most profitable unit in Amazon, it is currently experiencing a slowdown in growth as corporate customers seek to reduce expenses. During the pandemic, the unit significantly increased its headcount due to the high demand for digital services at the time.
Following a hiring spree, Amazon has decided to eliminate 27,000 mostly corporate positions, as it has been left with an overstaffed workforce. The company already let go of around 18,000 employees earlier this year.
In a statement made on 20th March, Amazon’s CEO, Andy Jassy, had announced that the new round of cuts would mainly affect the cloud computing division, AWS, as well as human resources, advertising, and gaming divisions.
According to a report by The Straits Times, AWS chief executive Adam Selipsky sent an internal note to employees stating that the division started informing those affected by the layoffs on Wednesday.
“It is a tough day across our organization, ” he said in the email.
“Given this rapid growth, as well as the overall business and macroeconomic climate, it is critical that we focus on identifying and putting our resources behind our top priorities—those things that matter most to customers and that will move the needle for our business.”
“In many cases this means team members are shifting the projects, initiatives or teams on which they work; however, in other cases it has resulted in these role eliminations.”
Adam Selipsky noted that Notification messages were sent to all impacted employees in the United States, Canada and Costa Rica.
In other regions, AWS are following local processes, which may include time for consultation with employee representative bodies.
“We are working hard to treat everyone impacted with respect and to provide a number of resources and touchpoints to aid in the transition. ”
“This includes a separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits and external job placement support, ” Adam Selipsky added.
Amazon had approximately 2,000 full-time and part-time employees in Singapore as of October 2021. However, the company has not disclosed the number of employees from Singapore who have been affected by the layoffs.
The ST said the mood in Singapore’s AWS office has been sombre, with “people crying at their desks”.
According to an employee who spoke to ST, the news of the layoffs came as a shock to all of them.
They had anticipated the retrenchment exercise to be completed by now, considering that it has been five weeks since the CEO’s announcement. Additionally, they did not expect AWS, which is Amazon’s most profitable division, to be impacted by the layoffs.
Tech firms in Singapore laid off 1,270 workers from July to mid-November 2022
Tech firms in Singapore laid off 1,270 workers from July to mid-November 2022, and the job cuts have continued into 2023.
Tech companies like Facebook parent Meta, Twitter, Microsoft and Google have all been axing staff.
Months after being laid off, many affected workers in Singapore are still struggling to gain employment.
Micron Technology, the largest US maker of memory chips, revealed cost-cutting measures in 12 December last year, including the reduction of its global workforce by about 10%.
Micron began laying off workers globally wide in February this year, including in Singapore.
