The tech giant axed 14,000 roles, and more layoffs could be coming in 2026. Employees might wonder why it’s necessary, and the company’s mixed messages aren’t helping.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is revising the company’s explanation for its mass layoffs this week, which could be frustrating for the 14,000 people who lost their jobs.
«The announcement that we made a few days ago was not really financially driven, and it’s not even really AI-driven—not right now, at least», Jassy said on a Thursday earnings call. «It’s culture.»
Jassy says Amazon’s growth in the past few years left it with too many people, locations, and types of businesses. He reiterated the company’s desire to operate like «the world’s largest startup, [which] means removing layers. It means increasing the amount of ownership that people have, and it means inventing and moving quickly.»
That partially conflicts with the memo Amazon published on the day it announced layoffs. Beth Galetti, head of HR at Amazon, also mentioned being the «world’s largest startup» and stressed the «importance of having the right structure to drive that level of speed and ownership.»
However, Galetti also specifically called out a desire to keep up with fast-moving AI technologies.
«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 wrote. «We’re convinced that we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business.
