Retail e-commerce giant Amazon’s mega layoff has impacted a particular workforce segment of employees the most: engineers. According to a report of CNBC, of the 4700 jobs cuts recently, 40% of them belonged to engineering roles as seen in documents filed in New York, California, New Jersey and Amazon’s home state of Washington.
The CNBC report added that layoffs impact has been sprawling across businesses from cloud computing, and devices to advertising, and retail and grocery stores. The majority of them were in engineering roles, the report said.
Earlier, Amazon announced its plan to layoff as many as 30,000 corporate employees globally. Reuters quoted sources as saying that the decision is line with company’s move to reduce expenses and compensate for overhiring during the peak demand of the pandemic.
While this layoff would be the largest job cut at Amazon since around 27,000 jobs were eliminated starting in late 2022, laying of 30,000 will represent a small percentage of Amazon’s 1.55 million total employees but nearly 10% of the company’s roughly 350,000 corporate employees.
Amazon has been trimming smaller numbers of jobs over the past two years across multiple divisions, including devices, communications, podcasting and others.
Previously, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had announced his decision to reduce an excess of bureaucracy at the company, including by reducing the number of managers.
In June, he said the increased use of artificial intelligence would likely case further job cuts.
“This latest move signals that Amazon is likely realizing enough AI-driven productivity gains within corporate teams to support a substantial reduction in force,” said Sky Canaves, an eMarketer analyst. “Amazon has also been under pressure in the short-term to offset the long-term investments in building out its AI infrastructure.”