When Divya Porwal’s friend landed in Bengaluru after the Diwali break, the first thing he saw wasn’t a festive greeting — it was an email from Amazon informing him he had been laid off.
“He boarded his flight back to Bengaluru after Diwali break, excited to be back,” Porwal wrote on X. “As soon as he landed, he turned on his phone — there it was. A layoff mail from Amazon.”
Her post is among dozens shared on social media this week after Amazon.com Inc confirmed plans to cut nearly 14,000 corporate jobs — one of its biggest rounds of layoffs in recent years. The move follows months of warnings from Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy, who had said that artificial intelligence (AI) would increasingly handle tasks once done by human employees.
Shock and stories of loss
Another user, Siya, wrote about a relative who lost his job on Tuesday.
“He used to brag about his salary and job… but I still feel bad for him and his family. He has a three-year-old child, and this must be really tough. It’s a reminder that no job is truly stable these days.”
A third user, Prapti, shared a chilling account of how layoffs unfolded in real time:
“My friend from Amazon told me she saw an entire team, including the manager, get laid off right in front of her eyes. The testing teams were the first to go. Laptops were collected on the spot — and that was it.”
Departments hit, AI in focus
In a blog post, Beth Galetti, senior vice president of people experience and technology at Amazon, said:
“The reductions we’re sharing today are a continuation of this work to get even stronger by further reducing bureaucracy, removing layers, and shifting resources to ensure we’re investing in our biggest bets.”
According to a Bloomberg report, the layoffs have hit multiple divisions, including logistics, payments, video games, and cloud computing. Following the announcement, several Amazon employees took to internal chat rooms and social media to discuss which teams were affected, share messages they received, and swap tips on retrieving personal files before system access was revoked.
By the numbers
- 14,000 corporate jobs cut (around 4% of workforce)
- Corporate headcount: 3,50,000
- Total employees: 1.55 million, mostly in warehouses
- Previous layoffs (2022–23): 27,000 roles
The latest cuts come after earlier reports suggested Amazon could trim as many as 30,000 positions, a scale that would exceed its last major round of layoffs during the post-pandemic cost-cutting phase.
The bigger picture
Amazon says the restructuring is part of a broader push to streamline operations and redirect investments towards AI and cloud infrastructure — areas it considers critical to future growth.
But as stories of sudden terminations continue to flood social media, the layoffs have also reignited debate about how automation is reshaping jobs in Big Tech.