Amazon Web Services cuts jobs in tech, sales for hundreds of staff

Cloud computing service Amazon Web Services has laid off several hundred employees from its sales, marketing and tech divisions.

This follows a series of jobs cuts by tech firms in 2024, including AWS’ parent entity and e-commerce platform Amazon.com.

The number of job cuts, which is not directly numbered, runs into hundreds at the sales, marketing and global divisions of AWS. It also includes role reduction in the physical stores technology team, AWS said.

"We've identified a few targeted areas of the organisation we need to streamline," an AWS spokesperson said.

Amazon, over the past months, has let go of hundreds of its employees in divisions like the Prime Video service, healthcare business and Alexa voice assistant unit.

Layoffs.fyi, a tracker for layoffs, estimates over 57,000 workers laid off across 229 firms this year.

The Jeff Bezos-found company had in 2022 and 2023 cut over 27,000 job roles, likely after an over-hiring spree by tech firms during the COVID-19 induced pandemic period.

AWS has about 60,000 employees in its sales, marketing and global services division, which is likely being restructured as part of a larger remodelling of the organisation under sales chief Matt Garman, The Information reported.

AWS, which is the cloud arm of Amazon, went through a growth slowdown in 2023 due to macroeconomic uncertainties, after which it started reflecting stabilising signs and also beat quarterly revenue expectations in February.

Microsoft challenges AWS as the world's biggest cloud provider, with an early lead in the race to earn money from generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) through its investments in OpenAI, the creator of text to code generator ChatGPT.

(With Reuters Inputs)