Amazon’s cloud division had advertised 32,000 jobs worldwide in July – including in Germany.
(Photo: Reuters)
Seattle The savings plans at the US company Amazon are taking on greater proportions than previously expected. According to US media reports, 10,000 jobs are to be cut across the group in a first wave of layoffs. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has also announced further layoffs for the coming year.
According to information from the Handelsblatt, the lucrative cloud division AWS of the world’s largest online retailer is also affected by the job cuts and austerity measures. And this despite the fact that the cloud business has become the company’s most important source of profits. On the other hand, online trading, with which Amazon became a global corporation, had made losses in the past few quarters.
For AWS, a hiring freeze for large parts of the area has been announced until at least the first quarter of next year, according to people close to the company. In addition, managers were asked to identify weak members of their teams.
The staff suspected that the group management wanted to wait until the most important customer conference, re:Invent, which started in Las Vegas at the end of November, before the full extent of the cuts was communicated. Handelsblatt learned about the layoffs from Amazon HR staff who specialize in talent acquisition for AWS and wish to remain anonymous.
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When asked, an Amazon spokesman did not comment on cuts at AWS and instead referred to a statement by CEO Jassy, who had announced further austerity measures in the wake of the current wave of layoffs. “There will be further downsizing as executives continue to make adjustments,” Jassy said.
>> Also read: End of the American Dream? Wave of layoffs in Silicon Valley also affects German skilled workers
The CEO added: “These decisions will be communicated to affected employees and organizations in early 2023. We don’t yet know exactly how many other features will be affected.”
Put the red pencil on the staff.
(Photo: AP)
AWS is the largest cloud provider in the world. A number of large corporations in Germany rely on Amazon solutions. The biggest competitors are Microsoft and Google. Most recently, the two rivals were able to slightly increase their market shares compared to Amazon.
Amazon’s cloud business is weakening
Overall, the cloud market has weakened somewhat. When presenting the latest quarterly figures, AWS missed analysts’ expectations.
The division grew sales by 28 percent compared to the same period last year. Analysts had assumed three percentage points more. Amazon indicated that growth rates are likely to slow further in the final quarter of this year.
>> Read here: Alexa brings Amazon loss of five billion dollars – Big Tech goes on austerity course
Amazon had hired many new employees in recent years. Between 2019 and 2021 alone, the group doubled its workforce from around 800,000 to 1.6 million employees. Most of these jobs were created in logistics.
But many jobs have also been created at AWS. In mid-July alone, the Amazon job portal counted 32,000 vacancies in the cloud sector, including in Germany, according to an analysis by the US portal Insider.
In its quarterly reports, Amazon does not break down how many employees work in which area. It is still unclear how many jobs could be lost in total.
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