Amazon is laying off hundreds of employees in its cloud division 


Mark Lennihan/Associated Press

Amazon is laying off hundreds of workers in its cloud division, emails obtained by BI showed. These cuts follow the elimination of about 160 roles in the company’s advertising unit last week.This downsizing comes after Amazon axed thousands of roles in 2023.

Amazon is laying off hundreds of workers in yet another round of cuts this year.

The latest round of job cuts will impact employees in its cloud division, Amazon Web Services, according to internal emails seen by Business Insider.

Sales and marketing workers will be hit, in addition to the team working on building tech for its retail stores, the emails said.

“We have made the difficult decision to reduce several hundred roles across specific Sales, Marketing, and Global Services (SMGS) organizations,” AWS SVP Matt Garman wrote in the email.

In an email to BI, an AWS spokesperson confirmed the job cuts.

“We’ve identified a few targeted areas of the organization we need to streamline in order to continue focusing our efforts on the key strategic areas that we believe will deliver maximum impact.”

It added, “We didn’t make these decisions lightly, and we’re committed to supporting the employees throughout their transition to new roles in and outside of Amazon. These decisions are difficult but necessary as we continue to invest, hire, and optimize resources to deliver innovation for our customers,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

Geekwire first reported the layoffs on Wednesday.

The AWS workforce reduction follows Tuesday’s report that said the company was reducing its “Just Walk Out” technology team.

The job cuts are part of an ongoing mass cost-cutting campaign at Amazon. Last week, the company cut “up to 160 roles” in its advertising unit last week, Amazon’s spokesperson told Business Insider after an internal email was obtained announcing the cuts.

Earlier this year, Amazon also cut hundreds of jobs across Prime Video and its healthcare units.

The latest cuts come after the tech giant axed thousands of roles in 2023.

A recently obtained internal HR document from last year showed Amazon placed more employees on performance-improvement plans while the mass layoffs were being carried out.