Some of the 14,000 employees Amazon began laying off this week reportedly found out through a mass text message, according to a recent report.
Affected workers received two text messages early Tuesday morning as the e-commerce giant carried out the round of corporate job cuts, sources familiar with the matter and screenshots reviewed by Business Insider confirmed.
One of the messages instructed employees to check their personal and work emails before coming into the office, aiming to prevent laid-off staffers from arriving and discovering that their access badges no longer worked, the report said.
On Tuesday, some Amazon employees reportedly learned their jobs had been eliminated through two early-morning text messages. A second message instructed staff to contact a help desk if they had not received “an email message about your role,” according to Business Insider.
Amazon declined to comment.
The layoffs are part of the company’s ongoing effort to “reduce bureaucracy” in its white-collar workforce, Beth Galetti, Amazon’s HR executive, said in a staff memo. “While this will include reducing in some areas and hiring in others, it will mean an overall reduction in our corporate workforce of approximately 14,000 roles,” she wrote.
Managers were reportedly trained Monday on how to brief affected employees once the emails were sent, sources told Reuters. Teams across HR, devices, services, and operations were impacted.
Employees affected by the cuts can apply for internal roles or receive severance packages, outplacement services, and health benefits, according to Galetti.
Overall, Amazon plans to cut roughly 30,000 corporate positions—about 9% of its global office workforce—over the coming weeks, with another round expected in January after the holiday season, sources told the New York Times.
Since Andy Jassy became CEO in 2021, Amazon has eliminated tens of thousands of jobs. In June, he encouraged employees to embrace automation to “help us reinvent the company,” noting that while technology could create new roles, it would also bring “efficiency gains,” reducing the number of people needed for certain jobs.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has encouraged employees to embrace AI and automation, building on the company’s existing use of robots and automated systems in its warehouses.
According to The New York Times, Amazon plans to avoid hiring more than 600,000 warehouse workers in the coming years, even as it expects to double its item sales over the same period. The company described the report as “an incomplete and misleading picture of our plans.”
In its latest quarter, Amazon reported $18 billion in profit and increased spending on AI-focused data centers. Capital expenditures, including data centers, are projected to exceed $120 billion this year, nearly 50% higher than last year.
“Some may ask why we’re reducing roles when the company is performing well,” Galetti wrote in her Tuesday memo. She explained that “the world is changing quickly” and Amazon aims to operate “more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership” to fully leverage AI opportunities.
