Amazon plans to lay off about 10,000 employees in the near future. American newspapers reported that New York times And the The Wall Street Journal Monday evening based on insiders. According to newspapers, the size of the layoff round is still a matter of debate.
The layoffs will primarily be in Amazon’s hardware division, which develops the Kindle e-reader and Alexa voice computer, among other things, in which the company is investing $5 billion annually. Also among office staff – those working in technology and the human resources department – there will be significant cuts. Distribution centers will not be affected, as Amazon defaults to experiencing a staff shortage.
Amazon employs nearly one and a half million people around the world. This makes it the second largest private employer in the United States after Walmart. It is not known if the layoffs round will also affect jobs in the Netherlands. Amazon has established the international headquarters of its AWS cloud division in Amsterdam and last year opened its first Dutch distribution center in Rosenborg, near Hoofddorp.
Amazon is under the management of CEO Andy Gacy, who succeeded Jeff Bezos last summer, to implement cost savings. Earlier, Jassy closed distribution centers which were not profitable enough and plans to establish new ones were put on hold. During the pandemic, Amazon has invested heavily in logistics centers to deal with the increase in online orders. Amazon has done this, among other things, by hiring a record 800,000 new employees.
Read more about layoffs: “Cold Wave of Layoffs in Silicon Valley”
Other layoffs
With layoffs, Amazon (annual sales volume in 2021: 400 billion euros) joins a string of big tech companies that are forced to downsize their workforce under the pressure of the faltering global economy.
For example, right after the Twitter takeover, Elon Musk announced that he was laying off half of the 7,500 employees. Last week, Meta followed, which allowed 13 percent of the workforce (11,000 employees) to leave. Companies like Netflix, Snap, Tesla, and Stripe have massively laid off employees recently. Many young technology companies (startups) are now reducing their workforce due to lack of new growth capital.
There are no major layoffs at Dutch tech companies at the moment, although meal delivery company Just Eat Takeaway announced earlier this year that it would not be hiring new employees for the time being. Tech companies with a large office in the Netherlands that are already downsizing during the pandemic, such as taxi app Uber and hotel website Booking.com, are busy attracting new employees.
A version of this article also appeared in The November 15, 2022 جريدة
