Amazon plans to lay off twice as many workers as it had previously confirmed. In the upcoming months, some 20,000 employees will be fired globally.
The organization rates employees from level 1 to level 7, and staff at all levels are likely to be affected, the Computerworld report claimed.
After Internet giants Meta and Twitter embarked on a layoff spree, The New York Times was the first to disclose in mid-November that Amazon will follow a similar route.
The company has reportedly told its managers to identify work performance problems among employees, a part of the staff layoff process.
If Amazon slashes these 20,000 employees, it would result in a 6% reduction in corporate staff and a 1.3% reduction in its 1.5 million-person workforce including global distribution center and hourly workers.
The affected employees will get severance pay and a 24-hour notice of the change.
“There is a sense of fear among employees in the company as the news has come out,” one of the sources told Computerworld, who was informed directly about the layoff effort. The layoffs would be the largest staff reduction in the company’s history.
After the NYT report, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy confirmed that layoffs were taking place in a public message to staff members on November 17. However, he did not provide any information regarding the anticipated number of layoffs.
“Our annual planning process extends into the new year, which means there will be more role reductions as leaders continue to make adjustments. Those decisions will be shared with impacted employees and organizations early in 2023,” Andy Jassy wrote in a public message.
Reportedly, Amazon spokesperson did not ascertain the number of employees being sacked, but reiterated the CEO’s November 17 message saying, “We haven’t concluded yet exactly how many other roles will be impacted (we know that there will be reductions in our Stores and PXT organizations), but each leader will communicate to their respective teams when we have the details nailed down.”