Amazon Layoffs India: E-commerce giant Amazon, in a major global restructuring, has laid off between 800 and 1,000 corporate employees in India, according to a report of Economic Times. The firing occurred
due to the implementation of cost-cutting measures and the adoption of AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology.
India workforce spanning from finance, marketing, human resource, and tech, is part of its global lay off of 14,000 employees, according to ET report.
The ET report added that these job cuts mainly impacted those workers who were directly reporting to the global teams.
Last year, Amazon chief Andy Jassy hinted at the layoffs in the coming times aimed at reducing the layers, increasing ownership and simplifying bureaucracy across the organization.
Amazon had laid off more than 500 employees in India in 2023 as a part of a job reduction exercise that impacted 9,000 people globally.
According to a report chief HR Beth Galetti’s blog post, fired employees would receive full pay and benefits for the next 90 days, including a severance offer.
She, however, mentioned that Amazon will continue to hire in key strategic areas while finding additional places, where they can remove layers, increase ownership and realize efficiency gains.
Galetti in the blog post emphasized that the ‘world is changing quickly’. “This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and altogether new ones),” she added.
According to Business Insider’s review on an internal document detailing about 7,500 employees who received layoff notices, over 78% of those affected were managers at levels five to seven — positions ranging from junior to senior management.
The report also showed that more than 80% of the impacted staff worked in Amazon’s retail division, including its e-commerce, human resources, and logistics teams.
Many Tech Giants Cut Jobs
The scourge of AI has had a perceivable impact across the globe as major tech giants have cut jobs at a substantial level.
Salesforce had cut over 4000 jobs in September as part of business restructuring due to the dynamic disruption through the emerging technology. Confirming the layoffs, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, in the Logan Bartlett podcast, said, “AI takes on a larger share of customer-facing operations”.
This year itself Google has cut several hundred jobs in different divisions as part of business restructuring. 200 workers were replaced by tech giant with the AI after they protested low wages, poor work, and pay conditions. These workers were hired to assess and train Google’s AI products – the Gemini chatbot.
IT giant Microsoft in July announced it was laying off about 9,000 employees, or 4% of its workforce, in the latest round of job cuts. The latest layoffs were part of Microsoft’s restructuring efforts amid AI investments. This was the third round of layoffs this year, after about 6,000 jobs cuts (3% of its workforce) in May and over 300 sackings just a week after.
