Amazon to sack 30,000 employees as AI blamed for ‘largest minimize in historical past’
The cuts amount to around 10% of the company’s global workforce, although Amazon has not yet commented directly on the claims, which could see the layoffs start today
Thousands could be sacked(Image: Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The world’s biggest online retailer is set to sack 30,000 staff – the largest cull in history. Just months after already showing the door to 14,000 members of its workforce in October, Amazon is now set to get rid of more than double that in one go.
And according to several reports, the mass-sacking could take place as early as today. Cuts are being blamed on artificial intelligence, with less human staff said to be needed across its Amazon Web Services, retail, Prime Video and – ironically – Human Resources departments.
The cuts amount to around 10% of the company’s global workforce, although Amazon has not yet commented directly on the claims.
Speaking in October ,CEO Andy Jassy said about previous layoffs: “Really, it’s culture. If you grow as fast as we did for several years … you end up with a lot more people than what you had before, and you end up with a lot more layers.”
And Edward Targett, business expert and The Stack founder said on his Linkedin: “The mood is understood to be pretty morbid internally, unsurprisingly. These have been well-signalled by Amazon.
“I’m fascinated by how layoffs at this kind of scale are done without creating risk at projects where a lot of institutional capability remains in human format.
“Certainly at another Big Tech firm, earlier mass layoffs were algorithmically optimised to avoid accusations of bias over performance, one insider alleged to me last year, and it’s hard not to wind up with big and unforeseen holes in projects when computers and fear of legal risk are driving these decisions…” It has not yet been confirmed whether any of the sackings will impact the UK arm of its business, however.
The company is said to have around 75,000 staff employed in the UK, across more than 100 sties – it is also said to indirectly support around 160,000 more jobs throughout its UK supply chain.
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