Amazon’s plans for a fresh round of corporate job cuts were inadvertently revealed internally after a premature email alerted employees to layoffs before the company was ready to formally notify those affected.
The incident occurred on Tuesday, when Amazon appeared to mistakenly send an internal email to employees at Amazon Web Services ahead of layoffs planned for Wednesday, Reuters reported. The email, which included a team-wide meeting invitation, suggested that impacted staff had already been informed of their job losses.
The message was signed by Colleen Aubrey, senior vice president of applied AI solutions at AWS, and referred to the layoffs under the internal name “Project Dawn”. It stated that affected employees in the US, Canada and Costa Rica had been notified, which was not the case at the time, according to Reuters.
In Slack messages reviewed by the news agency, AWS employees said the scheduled meeting was cancelled shortly after the email was sent, adding to confusion among staff. Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The premature communication comes as Amazon prepares to cut up to 14,000 corporate roles globally, part of a broader plan to reduce its white-collar workforce by around 30,000 positions. Reuters reported last week that thousands of corporate employees were expected to be laid off starting this week, though the company has yet to publicly confirm the full scope or timing.
People familiar with the matter told Reuters that the cuts are expected to affect multiple units, including AWS, retail, Prime Video and human resources, underscoring the breadth of the restructuring. On Tuesday, Amazon also confirmed job cuts in its Fresh grocery and Go market divisions as it moves to close or convert some physical stores, without disclosing numbers.
Amazon employs about 1.58 million people worldwide, most of them in fulfilment and logistics roles. While the planned reductions represent a small fraction of total headcount, they would amount to nearly 10% of the company’s corporate workforce if fully implemented.
The company has previously linked its workforce reductions to increased use of artificial intelligence and efforts to streamline decision-making. In an October blog post, Amazon’s head of human resources, Beth Galetti, said AI was enabling efficiency gains and signalled that further job cuts were likely. The errant email sent this week referred to a follow-up post by Galetti that has not yet been published.
As Amazon pushes ahead with automation and cost controls, the episode highlights the operational challenges of managing large-scale layoffs, particularly when HR teams themselves are among the affected functions.