The company says the opportunities provided by AI means it needs to be "organised more leanly."
Liv McMahon,Technology reporter and
Osmond Chia,Business reporter
Amazon has confirmed it plans to cut thousands of jobs, saying it needs to be "organised more leanly" to seize the opportunity provided by artificial intelligence (AI).
The tech giant said on Tuesday it would reduce its global corporate workforce by "approximately 14,000 roles".
Earlier reporting had suggested it was planning to lay off as many as 30,000 workers.
Beth Galetti, a senior vice president at Amazon, wrote in a note to staff that the move would make the company "even stronger" by shifting resources "to ensure we're investing in our biggest bets and what matters most to our customers' current and future needs".
She acknowledged that some would question the move given the company was performing well.
At the end of July, Amazon reported second quarter results which beat Wall Street expectations on several counts, including a 13% year over year increase in sales to $167.7bn (£125bn).
But Ms Galetti said the cuts were needed because AI was "the most transformative technology we've seen since the Internet" and was "enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before."
"We're convicted that we need to be organised more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business," she added.
The note, shared with Amazon employees earlier on Tuesday, said the company was "working hard to support everyone whose role is impacted" - including by helping those affected find new roles within Amazon.
Those who cannot will receive "transition support" including severance pay, it said.
The BBC has asked if it will affect employees in the UK.
The company has more than 1.5 million employees across its warehouses and offices worldwide.
This includes around 350,000 corporate workers, which include those in executive, managerial and sales roles, according to figures that Amazon submitted to the US government last year.
Like many technology firms, Amazon hired aggressively during the Covid-19 pandemic to meet the surge in demand for online deliveries and digital services.
Amazon boss Andy Jassy has since focused on reducing spending as the company invests heavily in AI tools to boost efficiency.
Mr Jassy said in June that the increase in AI tools will likely lead to job cuts as machines take over routine tasks.
"We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs," he said then.
The company has carried out several rounds of cuts to its corporate division in recent years.
It laid off around 27,000 workers over several months in 2022, as rivals similarly looked to reverse hiring increases made during the pandemic.
But analysts said its more subdued profit guidance for the forthcoming quarter had left some sceptical of the value of its enormous AI investments and whether they would pay off.
Slower growth for its cloud business, Amazon Web Services (AWS), compared to rivals Microsoft and Google, also sparked concern among some investors.
Amazon will report its latest quarterly results on Thursday for the period ending 30 September.
Read the original article
Comments
These aren't "job losses", these are "firings". They aren't unfortunate accidents of external origin that happened to them, they are conscious internal decisions to let people go.
> These aren't "job losses", these are "firings".
While both terms mean someone no longer has a job, they differ in cause and implication.
Firing is when employer terminates someone for cause, i.e. employee did something wrong or didn't meet expectations. Job loss is a broader term, simply means the person no longer has a job, for any reason, but typically layoffs, downsizing, restructuring, plant closure, or being fired.
So I'm not really upset about saying job losses in this case rather than firing, because the employees who lost their jobs didn't do anything wrong and I think it is useful to be able to distinguish.
The phrase that DOES irk me is "let go" vs. "fire". Now that is a weasel phrasing.
"job loss" is purposefully passive to remove culpability from the entity (Amazon) that is making the active choice to terminate these people's jobs.
It's the same as language like "officer involved shooting" to avoid saying "an officer shot a person" or calling a "murder" a "loss of life".
The more important thing it does though is remove culpability from the employee who doesn't have a job anymore. That person will be looking for a job (we assume, perhaps a few will just retire or something else). The companies they apply at will want to know why they no longer work at Amazon - there is a big difference between "I was sexually harassing my coworkers" (pick a crime, sexual harassment seems to be the big one these days), and "Amazon decided they didn't need my job done any more".
By SoftTalker 2025-10-2813:36 "culpability" is also purposefully loaded. It's not wrong for a company to decide that certain jobs are no longer needed. How they handle that could be more or less considerate of the human impact, but there's really no way to do it that won't cause some some upset to the terminated employee.
It's also a total gut-punch to employees. "We had a great quarter!... not a good enough though, so GTFO"
I can only imagine what this will do to morale. If even positive quarters means job cuts, why even try to have a positive quarter.
> purposefully passive to remove culpability from the entity (Amazon) that is making the active choice to terminate these people's jobs.
Opening line in the article: "Amazon has confirmed it plans to cut thousands of jobs, saying it needs to be "organised more leanly" to seize the opportunity provided by artificial intelligence (AI)."
And the statement from Amazon uses the phrase "we are reducing..."
By Gud 2025-10-2816:46 If a person fails to understand they are essentially working for a feudal lord when they sign up to work for Amazon, the educational system has failed.
In the modern capitalist world, entire industries are shipped over seas or simply vanish.
Question. Why is it the shareholders of AMZNs responsibility to keep people employed?
By hn_throwaway_99 2025-10-2813:061 reply Whenever there are layoffs of a major company, like half the comments here always bemoan the particular wording the article or company uses to describe the layoffs. It's a pointless exercise IMO (though I agree with you, ironically "firing" is less accurate than "let go").
Layoffs suck. Companies should be judged by their actions (e.g. severance, who is being laid off, etc.) and just ignore the words.
By johnnyanmac 2025-10-295:11 Well their actions suck and their reasoning is probably a lie. So... what now? I already cancelled my Prime subscription this year.
By pseudalopex 2025-10-2814:001 reply > Firing is when employer terminates someone for cause, i.e. employee did something wrong or didn't meet expectations.
This meaning is present in many people's minds. It is not present in many people's minds or any dictionary I saw ever.
to remove someone from their job, either because they have done something wrong or badly, or as a way of saving the cost of employing them[1]
The act or an instance of dismissing someone from a job.[2]
the action of forcing somebody to leave their job[3]
And so on.
[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fire
[2] https://www.thefreedictionary.com/firing
[3] https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...
counterpoint:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fire#Verb
4. (transitive, employment) To terminate the employment contract of (an employee), especially for cause (such as misconduct, incompetence, or poor performance).
By edanm 2025-10-2821:20 > Firing is when employer terminates someone for cause, i.e. employee did something wrong or didn't meet expectations.
AFAIK you are using the term "for cause" incorrectly. Firing "for cause" is usually more serious than simply firing for poor performance or similar. It's usually for something like breach of contract, for getting in legal trouble, for theft, wilful misconduct, etc. It also usually results in losing severance, options, etc.
Simple firing for poor performance is not firing "for cause".
By cjbgkagh 2025-10-2814:08 That’s what I was thinking but I looked it up in the dictionary and appears that firing is already pretty neutral yet picked up the negative connotation, presumably because most people consider firings to be with cause. Even ‘layoffs’ has picked up a negative connotation. I’m not sure if it’s possible for language to to continuously outrun the associations, I guess we either police the language more fervently or continue inventing new words.
Part of me hates the capriciousness of randomly selected layoffs but it’s done for a few main reasons, firstly that it’s not exploitable by internal politicking (at least less explicable). Secondly, reduces exposure to lawsuits about performance. Thirdly, reduces reputational damage to those laid off. Of course there is an incredible incentive to lie about the randomness.
By Forgeties79 2025-10-2813:33 The only phrases they should be using are “Amazon lays off 14,000…” or (in the case of with cause) “Amazon fires 14,000…”
To me everything else is weasel words.
By FranzFerdiNaN 2025-10-2814:50 > Firing is when employer terminates someone for cause,
People are fired for a cause, namely Amazon needs more profit for its shareholders.
Why is downsizing and an employee’s role no longer being cost effective for the business not considered “cause” for firing?
IANAL, but I believe "cause" means "the employee gave the company cause to fire them". Poor performance, bad conduct, etc.
Cause in this context specifically refers to the employee having done something wrong or illegal and means the employee is guilty of misconduct.
By lotsofpulp 2025-10-2813:101 reply In the US, if your employment is terminated for cause, i.e. due to your underperformance at work, then you are not eligible to receive unemployment benefits from the government.
There could be other conditions too depending on whatever employment agreement exists, but the point is to determine if an employee’s lack of performance caused their employment to be terminated or something external to the employee caused their employment to be terminated.
By bluGill 2025-10-2813:20 With cause think crimes or near crimes. Sexually harassment of a coworker, taking things from the warehouse...
I was just thinking the same, this is quite the weasel wording. Not only the “losses” but the passive voice. As if Amazon is a person who walked to work one day and realise it has a hole in its pocket from which thousands of jobs fell off. “Oh well, these things happen, not my fault and nothing I can do about it”, Amazon says as it shrugs its shoulders and whistles down the factory floor with a skip in its step.
“Passive voice” is a grammatical term.
“Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses,” is not an example of the passive voice.
“14,000 workers were fired by Amazon,” is an example of the passive voice.
There is not a 1:1 relationship between being vague about agency and using the passive voice.
By justonceokay 2025-10-2813:271 reply GP obviously meant passive tone, not passive noun-verb relationship.
By happimess 2025-10-2813:09 I've heard it described as the "exculpative voice".
By qsi 2025-10-2813:10 Correct. There's nothing vague about "the burglar was shot by me."
It's passive but crystal clear.
By TheOtherHobbes 2025-10-2813:11 Grammatically correct, but missing the narrative subtext.
"Job losses" is a passive construction because it hides the fact that the agent - Amazon - made a deliberate and conscious decision to destroy these jobs.
People do occasionally lose things deliberately, but more usually it happens to someone through carelessness or accident, often with associated regret.
This is an example of framing, where a narrative spin is put on events.
"Amazon destroyed 14,000 jobs" would be far more accurate. But we never see that construction from corporate-controlled media outlets.
Companies create jobs. They never destroy them. "Losses" always happen because of regrettable circumstances or outside forces.
The company's hand is always forced. It's never a choice made out of greed (the truth) but because of a plausible excuse.
By mkipper 2025-10-2815:28 This also stuck out to me, but in defense of Amazon (yuck), I don't see that language directly from anyone at Amazon. They use the regular "reduction in corporate workforce" BS that every big company on earth uses. It just seems like an editorial choice unless I'm missing something.
By anonymous_sorry 2025-10-2812:461 reply There's an interesting asymmetry in language in this area.
Jobs are "created" by a company or an industry.
But they never seem to be "destroyed", instead they are "lost".
If the company starts hiring again, they're "creating" new jobs, not "finding" the ones they were careless enough to lose.
By Imustaskforhelp 2025-10-2815:43 Doublespeak? Try to speak in such a legalese way that although things are technically true, yet still those words are crafted in such a way to influence others...
So in this case of our capitalist system, doublespeak exists in such a way because they can create money or not lose money by doing such doublespeak as saying to investors this as a destroyed would make them have a negative connotation with amazon itself which would reduce their stock price.
Everything is done for the stock price. Everything. The world is a little addicted on those shareholders returns that we can change our language because of it.
"job losses" is BBC editorializing. They do not use that term in their letter: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-workfor...
I sincerely suspect the BBC would only ever use "fired"/"firings" if the employees were being dismissed for conduct reasons, since that's the common usage in British English. I've been let go -- indeed, I've lost my job (it's the employees who suffer job losses, not the employer) -- but I've never been fired.
By acatnamedjoe 2025-10-2813:151 reply "Firing" is becoming a bit more common in Britain, but still sounds like an Americanism to my British ears.
I would use "sacking" for performance related termination, and "losing ones job" in all other cases. I suspect BBC would use the same.
I think we may be hitting an issue in translation between English and American; in British English "fired" implies "for cause", while a "blameless" process of headcount reduction is known as "redundancy". "Job losses" is a perfectly reasonable neutral phrase here. Indeed, under UK law and job contracts you generally cannot just chuck someone out of their job without either notice or cause or, for large companies, a statutory redundancy process.
People like to make too much out of active/passive word choices. Granted it can get very propagandistic ("officer-involved shooting"), but if you try to make people say "unhoused" instead of "homeless" everyone just back-translates it in their head.
By iamacyborg 2025-10-2813:11 > Indeed, under UK law and job contracts you generally cannot just chuck someone out of their job without either notice or cause or, for large companies, a statutory redundancy process.
This is only true when an employee has worked for a company for 2 or more years
I think American English is the same colloquially. “I got fired” means I didn’t perform or did something wrong. “I got laid off” is our “I was made redundant”.
“Fired” is also a technical term for both cases, in academic/economist speak.
By thaumasiotes 2025-10-2813:371 reply > in British English "fired" implies "for cause", while a "blameless" process of headcount reduction is known as "redundancy"
OK. I was fired for no stated cause in a process that didn't involve headcount reduction, or the firing of anyone except me specifically. (The unstated cause seems to have been that I had been offered a perk by the manager who hired me that the new manager didn't want to honor after the original guy was promoted.)
How would you describe that, in British English?
Indeed, Amazon use the euphemism, "making organizational changes".
By mc32 2025-10-2813:07 It’s equivalent to “restructuring” which doesn’t directly mean reduction in force but it does mean that I directly.
By jalapenos 2025-10-2812:43 Makes it sound like they shuffled desks and gave everyone new team names. How fun!
(Not like, you know, some people getting divorced soon, some people biting a revolver soon)
By sgt 2025-10-2812:38 And by applying these organizational changes, each person can become more load bearing and have so much more scope and impact. This is not a loss, it's a great win for everyone! /s
By antifacistpleb 2025-10-2812:52 [dead]
By motorest 2025-10-2812:05 > These aren't "job losses", these are "firings". They aren't unfortunate accidents of external origin that happened to them, they are conscious internal decisions to let people go.
This. They also make it their point to send the message this particlar firing round is completely arbitrary and based on a vague hope that they somehow can automate their way out of the expected productivity hit, and that they enforce this cut in spite of stronger sales.
"Letting go" belongs in the same HR phrasebook. They didn't ask permission to quit and the company were so generous to let them, the initiative was from the other side.
By hibikir 2025-10-2813:51 I thought the modern lingo was "impacted". So and so was impacted. Ten thousand employees were impacted. It avoids let go, but detaches as much as possible from the personal crisis.
By qsi 2025-10-2813:14 That reads differently to me. The company is doing the letting go. Like letting loose. Or letting fly. It's agency on the part of the company. Letting them see. All of these will have euphemistic overtones as no company will want to say that they axed 10,000 people.
By BadCookie 2025-10-2813:30 It’s better than “RIFed,” at least.
By coliveira 2025-10-2814:00 There is so much stupidity to unpack here. They say they need to use the opportunity provided by AI. However, what kind of opportunity is that requiring them to fire people in order to use it? Is AI making them more efficient or less efficient? If it's making more efficient, why they need to lay off all these people who are getting more efficient? So that other companies will pick up the workers they spend so much time to train on their systems, and replicate the same technologies elsewhere?
I think these companies have lost all their brains and there is a stupid AI system making bad decisions for them. I also fully expect these companies to lose their shirt to smarter companies in the next few years and decades.
Jeffrey Bezos: All those jobs will be lost. Like tears in the rain.
By disqard 2025-10-2815:34 (you inspired me)
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. A blue-green planet from suborbital space. Four commas in my net worth. I watched tens of thousands of employees get misplaced in my couch cushions. All their jobs will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
By reassess_blind 2025-10-2813:012 reply Companies have no incentive to employ as many people as possible. Really it’s the opposite, make as much money as possible, while paying as few employees as possible.
By bluGill 2025-10-2813:28 That is the incentive to employee more people - they can do more with those people. There is a balance between the two though. More people means less focus.
By dmschulman 2025-10-2813:07 The incentive many times is to create a scarcity of talent for other tech companies by hiring as many experts as you can. Facebook, Amazon, and many others have been employing this strategy for over a decade, but now that the era of cheap money is over we're seeing a pivot away.
By maxehmookau 2025-10-2812:021 reply 100%. Amazon hired 14,000 people, and now it's firing 14,000 people it no longer wants on its payroll. Plain and simple.
By actionfromafar 2025-10-2812:13 Nah, it gained 14,000 people, they kinda sneak in to the buildings and start doing work if you aren't serious about your perimeter security.
By heresie-dabord 2025-10-2812:045 reply From the CNN report [1]:
---
Al won’t just effect change at Amazon, Jassy said. AI "will change how we all work and live," including "billions" of AI agents “across every company and in every imaginable field." However, much of this remains speculative.
"Many of these agents have yet to be built, but make no mistake, they’re coming, and coming fast," Jassy said.
---
[1] _ https://lite.cnn.com/2025/10/28/business/amazon-layoffs
By cromd 2025-10-2814:06 Their addition of AI into Quicksight (their BI tool) really cemented for me how much they're willing to bluff to look relevant. They launched the AI addition at least a year ago, but recently rebranded the whole thing as "Quick Suite", promoting new AI capabilities. It really just seems like a new skin, with more purple. So far, out of 4 people at my org who tried it, all were disappointed after upgrading. I get much better results from sending a CSV to ChatGPT and asking for a graph.
It just doesn't seem to work out of the box. I test drove it on 20 BI questions, and for trivial questions, it gets about 50% right, and for more nuanced questions, it gets about 20% right. For example, I have a table like "people" with a column like "job_title" which has 10 possible values in an uneven distribution, and I asked "what fraction of people are nurses?". It gives me a pie chart where each slice wrongly gets 10%, because of the 10 possible values. Or if I asked what the mix by decade was, it would just show a flat line, 10% each period.
Then you have the more tricky questions, like "show me the revenue for each of the top 3 products in each quarter". It calculates an all-time top 3 first, and then shows the same products each quarter, instead of redoing it within each quarter. Reasonable enough, but when you try to correct it, it just gets stuck, possibly with an even worse answer, and there's no way out of the loop.
Why would they let executives touch something so half-baked?
Continually AI is used to justify layoffs that seem like simple corrections to overhiring.
By HacklesRaised 2025-10-2813:092 reply I always wonder if the people responsible for the over-hiring are on the block? My personal experience suggests not.
By nothrowaways 2025-10-2812:172 reply Replace Jassy with AI
By iLoveOncall 2025-10-2812:21 GPT-1 or GPT-2, which would match his reasoning abilities, are unfortunately deprecated, so we can't.
By wiseowise 2025-10-2812:37 They will. But by the time it happens, Jassy already made millions in cash + much more in stocks and will retire comfortably while others will slave away for new AI overlords.
By random9749832 2025-10-2812:06 Prepare for the bogeyman.
By gedy 2025-10-2812:38 "Agents" is now a word on my corporate bullshit bingo card
By gniv 2025-10-2814:28 They are neither. They eliminated 14k roles. Employees have 90 days to find new roles. It remains to be seen how many end up being fired.
By jalapenos 2025-10-2812:44 They just have to look harder and they'll find those jobs they lost.
Passive voice deflects responsibility and agency.
Loss happens, firings are a decision.
By slumberlust 2025-10-2822:20 Ironically, Amazon's document writing culture stresses NOT using passive voice, but it seems acceptable to do so when you need to spin a PR.
By dust-jacket 2025-10-2812:36 in the uk job losses and firings are different things, with different meanings, so the criticism here is a bit off.
job loss / redundancy = there is no need for this role any more. your job is gone firing = you are not appropriate/fit/whatever for this role. your employment is gone. someone else can have your job
(the passive/active criticism is totally right though. this should read "Amazon CUTS / REMOVES 14,000 jobs")
By 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2025-10-2812:301 reply Same as "hackers stole your data" versus "we left your data on an open S3 bucket"
By jalapenos 2025-10-2812:51 We didn't fail to secure things because we spent our security budget on security theatre - we were just kindly offering those poor hackers money to support their families.
By portaouflop 2025-10-2812:132 reply It’s the same language used when taking about “car accidents”
They aren’t accidents, it’s an inherent part of how we designed cars and roads and we decided as society that we are ok with thousands of people killed by cars.
By throw0101c 2025-10-2812:291 reply > It’s the same language used when taking about “car accidents”
See perhaps the book There Are no Accidents by Jessie Singer:
> We hear it all the time: “Sorry, it was just an accident.” And we’ve been deeply conditioned to just accept that explanation and move on. But as Jessie Singer argues convincingly: There are no such things as accidents. The vast majority of mishaps are not random but predictable and preventable. Singer uncovers just how the term “accident” itself protects those in power and leaves the most vulnerable in harm’s way, preventing investigations, pushing off debts, blaming the victims, diluting anger, and even sparking empathy for the perpetrators.
[…]
> In this revelatory book, Singer tracks accidental death in America from turn of the century factories and coal mines to today’s urban highways, rural hospitals, and Superfund sites. Drawing connections between traffic accidents, accidental opioid overdoses, and accidental oil spills, Singer proves that what we call accidents are hardly random. Rather, who lives and dies by an accident in America is defined by money and power. She also presents a variety of actions we can take as individuals and as a society to stem the tide of “accidents”—saving lives and holding the guilty to account.
* https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/There-Are-No-Accident...
For automobiles specifically:
* https://crashnotaccident.com
* https://www.michigan.gov/mdot/travel/safety/road-users/crash...
* https://www.roadpeace.org/working-for-change/crash-not-accid...
By playworker 2025-10-2812:242 reply killed by drivers, cars are inanimate objects
By jonkho 2025-10-2812:56 “It’s not what you say, but how you say it” syndrome.
It’s like a rocket flew into the refugee camp vs the occupation forces struck the refugee camp with a rocket.
My favourite is during terrorist attacks in Europe, it's always like "car attacks crowd". Like the car's wife had left it and it had decided to go out with a bang.
By wtcactus 2025-10-2812:59 Normally it’s the terrorists that are so bright that they fire rockets into their own territory. So, “rocket flew” is actually being nice to them.
The same difference as in "He died of heart attack" and "She was killed in a car crash".
Or one of my favorites, "was hit by a car". While true in the strict physical sense, that’s like reporting that someone was "shot by a gun".
By jalapenos 2025-10-2812:49 Fox news spin: "his heart murdered him, as we all know all hearts secretly want to do to all of us".
Passive vs. active voice. "Job losses" is chickenshit language.
If you're going to fire people, at least have the integrity to own your actions, instead of trying to make it sound like something that "just happened".
By itsoktocry 2025-10-2813:061 reply >Passive vs. active voice. "Job losses" is chickenshit language.
"Job losses" isn't passive voice. "Jobs were lost" would be passive voice.
Why are people so hung up on "job losses", as if we don't hear this every day? Who cares?
By JKCalhoun 2025-10-2812:26 > let people go
Or, as you said, firings.
By hk1337 2025-10-2812:59 It's a loss for the one being fired.
By Toby1VC 2025-10-2812:28 These numbers are inflated to be unparsable. I suspect it's either 14 people or a small monetary loss. Do you feel different today?
By supriyo-biswas 2025-10-2812:201 reply The conspiracist view would be that the media-industrial complex would want to prevent the stock price of a given company from dipping, as well as help them skirt around legal issues that may arise for the company in question if everyone reports the "layoff" as such, which is not always done according to practices (there are sometimes reports in the media about such, not specifically about Amazon though).
By NoMoreNicksLeft 2025-10-2813:06 Mass layoffs tend to make stock prices go higher, not lower... so nothing to worry about there. If the news stories were even more brutal, accusing Amazon of axing tens of thousands and then laughing when those people begged and pleaded that they wouldn't be able to afford baby formula, I think I suspect that this would be even better at closing time than some less offensive journalism.
By mv4 2025-10-2812:23 ... which will also result in bonuses to execs for hitting/exceeding their efficiency goals.
By InsideOutSanta 2025-10-2813:41 > These aren't "job losses"
You don't understand. Amazon lost 14,000 jobs in its couch cushions. It can happen to anyone; clearly, no one is at fault. Least of all Amazon, which, if you really think about it, is the real victim here.
/s
By hopelite 2025-10-2812:25 Narcissistic processes/systems/people always externalize the consequences of their own actions by pushing those consequences off on others while keeping the benefits they pillaged for themselves.
Unfortunately for us all, it is just a more complex and sophisticated version of "I'm going to club you over the head and rape and pillage your community". I have been thinking through how you would go about getting people to understand something that they have been conditioned to not just be unable or maybe even incapable of perceiving, but hav also been conditioned to actively and aggressively reject; effectively, how to do you deprogram people from abuse?
You are attempting to do that in a very small way, helping people realize the psychopathic, narcissistic, abusive word manipulation that the focus-grouped "job losses" represents; even though technically they are layoffs, but they are a predatory, abusive, grooming, gaslighting type behavior. But at least we should all rejoice, because now all these 14,000 people have wonderful "opportunities" in their life.
By drcongo 2025-10-2815:25 To lose one job, Mr. Bezos, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose 14000 looks like carelessness.
It's wild that you can legally work for a company, spend your limited life's time to build a part of it while not owning even a tiny bit of it (getting paid for unit of time - a finite resource) and then just get fired once you are not longer useful and that's the end of your income from the thing you built for you.
All the while people who own it don't have to perform any kind of work and keep getting paid in perpetuity as long as the company exists, even if the amount of time they spent is less than one millionth of the total man-days spent building it.
And they can use that money to buy more properties which generate them more passive income, getting ahead further and further.
I agree with your sentiment, but the reason for the imbalance is risk. As an employee you don't have financial risk tied to the company, you get a regular paycheck. But if you are an investor you take a risk that the money you invest can one day just vanish with zero return. With Amazon obviously the risk of that is low. But for many new companies the risk is very high. Therefore the payoffs are also high, to attract people to take the risk. Where I sympathize with your view is that sometimes an investment risk is taken, and the payout far exceeds the risk by any reasonable and sane margin. So you get investors spreading their risk across many ventures, on the hope that the one successful one is so successful that it pays the losses of the failed ones. But yea, this system is not really working for the vast majority of people and that is a tragedy.
By martin-t 2025-10-2812:44 > you get a regular paycheck
No you don't. That's exactly the point. Once you get fired, there are no longer any paychecks.
Meanwhile you have spent a limited resource you can't get back while investors have spent an unlimited resource they can always make more of.
And that even ignores the bottom line that people who get fired might lose their homes or not be able to feed their families. Tell me which investors risk so much that they become homeless if they lose the money.
---
The bottom line if you need a certain amount of money (an absolute value) to survive.
1) Workers get 100% of that from the 1 company they work for. Maybe they can work for 2 companies part time if they are lucky. But losing even 50% of their income hits their bottom line severely. Meanwhile, investors can (as you say) optimize their risk so they are pretty safe.
2) And workers often spend a majority of their income on this bottom line, not being able to save much, let alone amass enough to invest to a meaningful degree. Investors (people who already have so much money they can risk a significant hunk of it) can lose a significant chunk of it and still be comfortable able to afford rent or pay the bills.
In fact, they often don't pay rent because they could just buy their home (something increasingly difficult for workers). Imagine if these rich assholes had to spend a third or half of their income, just to have a roof above their head.
They'd do everything to change the system, in fact, they do exactly that now by evading taxes.
> As an employee you don't have financial risk tied to the company, you get a regular paycheck. But if you are an investor you take a risk that the money you invest can one day just vanish with zero return.
I would like people who cannot distinguish between an income stream and a capital value to learn what an "annuity" is.
Employees have very significant financial risk tied to the company because it's their main source of income. In America, there may even be significant health risks because health insurance is tied to the employer for baffling tax reasons.
Not to mention that in many startups, the employees are literally investors: they hold stock and options!
> So you get investors spreading their risk across many ventures
The employee version of this is called "overemployment", but it's quite risky.
By getpokedagain 2025-10-2812:572 reply > I agree with your sentiment, but the reason for the imbalance is risk. As an employee you don't have financial risk tied to the company, you get a regular paycheck. But if you are an investor you take a risk that the money you invest can one day just vanish with zero return.
I would challenge you to change your perspective on this. The average employee is likely to be worse in the case of a failed company than an investor. The investor may lose funds sure but the employee:
- loss of income which they live off of while the investor likely has other money remaining as they are rich.
- loss of access to good health coverage in the USA
- potential opportunity costs in the form of learning the wrong things to support the now defunct company ie learned rust but now we all code in AI tools
- potential opportunity costs implied in aging. Few want a 60 y/o engineer but a 60 y/o investor is great.
In short while the investor can lose objectively more money the worker loses more relatively.
Also doesn’t Amazon and many other tech companies give out RSUs as part of compensation for corporate employees? Obviously not all, but the OP’s complaint is, in my view, not entirely fair to levy at Amazon specifically.
By cool_dude85 2025-10-2812:412 reply >As an employee you don't have financial risk tied to the company
Is your livelihood, housing, ability to put food on the table for your family etc. not a risk by your understanding? Or are you only willing to accept certain types of financial risk as "risk"?
Here's an illustrative question: John Q. Billionaire owns shares in a passive index fund such that he practically has the same exposure to Amazon's stock price as if he owned $10 million in stock. I will potentially be homeless if I lose my 45k per year job at Amazon. Who has more risk?
By DrScientist 2025-10-2814:011 reply If being a founder/VC was truly more risky than being an employee - you'd see more homeless VC's and founders than employees, not just more millionaires - ie a spread either side.
Sure sometimes founders and angel investors take big risks - however often the money invested is other people's money!
So if you have a VC funded start up - the VC has persuaded other people to give them money they will invest on their behalf, and while there is a strong alignment with upside and VC renumeration - they still charge management fees come win or lose - and risk is spread across the fund.
Founders stock options are often aligned with VC's such that often they win with certain exit scenarios when the rank and file with ordinary options do not.
Under those scenarios I'm not sure either the VC's or the founders are really taking much more risk than the employees - as I'm not sure you see that many homeless VC's.
The real point here is that people who take the initiative ( to set up a company for example ) set the rules, and also often configure the rules to favour themselves - it's as simple as that. Isn't pretending otherwise window dressing/self-justification from people taking advantage of other people's passiveness?
By SecretDreams 2025-10-2812:53 > But if you are an investor you take a risk that the money you invest can one day just vanish with zero return.
Do such risks truly exist for modern mega corps? Do we even still think the underlying stocks of these companies trend with performance only?
Your sentiment comes from a wholly different investment era, where investing was primarily done by professionals and ETFs did not exist.
This is unfortunately true. Accusing a company for maximizing profit is naive. There is a structural problem on taxation Vs how much the company contributes back to society.
Morally speaking, your sentiment is right with most of us I think but asking for a company is asking for a thing, like asking for a building or a chair.
Earning more while exploring more than contributing back is unhealthy in any measurement of time. Back then, companies would have schools, universities and whatever to sustain the community they want to build. They would build roads, renovate public spaces and contribute to private transport and all of that apart from taxes. Now they invest on their own charities, which sometimes is quite hard to validate how much money goes in to where due to the conflict of interest and the possibility of fraud.
By hippo22 2025-10-2812:21 Most corporate employees at Amazon do get some stock, and you’re also free to exchange the money you earn for ownership of any public company.
Well you do get that weird "ownership" concept, pushed on everyone by that bozo Bezos, where you are supposed to "act as owner" of the business, but get no benefits out of it, only the risks :)
By coredog64 2025-10-2816:16 Cash comp at Amazon is extremely limited, with at least half of your comp coming from RSUs (or cash equivalent during the first year). So if Amazon is wildly successful, you do get a huge benefit out of it (my grants resulted in a salary that was ~ $100K more than the band I was assigned at review).
Having said that, the game is extremely rigged such that those types of wins are rare, while the downside risk of grants not having the expected value is uncapped.
By SoftTalker 2025-10-2813:44 "getting paid" is the operative word. Employees get paid, that is their compensation. If you want to be an owner, you need to either invest, or have that clearly included in your employment agreement.
Owners don't get paid as such. They have risk of loss, and only if the company is successful do they get a positive return on their investment.
Employees do have risk of losing their jobs, but don't really risk not getting paid for work performed.
People can use money to buy shares in companies to participate in their profits. Owners of companies carry the risk that the company goes bankrupt.
By throwaway173738 2025-10-2813:02 What’s the actual hazard there? I get that a company going bankrupt causes money to evaporate into wages and capital. But are the owners actually facing any real risk? You have to be an accredited investor to buy in in any real way and one of the tests is that your investment is below a certain percentage of your means.
By thegrimmest 2025-10-2814:08 This is called "consensual exchange" and it is by far the most ethical way to run society. You don't have to agree to these terms. You can go start your own company. It's a free country. The alternative always seems to boil down to various bureaucrats dictating terms to people. What gives them the right to do so?
You're no more entitled to be paid a salary than you are to get laid. Both satisfy needs that you undeniably have, but must be negotiated with other people on a strictly consensual basis.
By tirant 2025-10-2812:47 The same can be said in the relationship of the company towards the employee. Any employee can leave any moment they want and all the investments the company has done on them will be lost.
By 4ndrewl 2025-10-2812:41 I think you just invented co-operatives.
By reassess_blind 2025-10-2813:321 reply Correct, owning the business will almost always be a better financial deal than working for the business.
By adriand 2025-10-2812:28 You forgot to mention the part where they also invest millions in lobbying and buying off politicians to control policy, and hundreds of millions or billions acquiring media companies to control the public narrative, all so that ordinary workers - who vastly outnumber the billionaires - do not get out the pitchforks and demand a more equitable distribution of wealth.
To be clear, it’s worse. Read the press release carefully:
1. 14k was the net change in “corporate headcount” which is PR puffery speak saying they’re firing a lot more but when you net out folks let go slotting into open roles elsewhere the net change today would be a 14k reduction
2. It also says that “looking ahead” “we expect to… find additional places we can remove layers, increase ownership, and realize efficiency gains.” That’s PR puffery speak for “there will be more layoffs coming soon.”
Amazon has really struggled under Andy Jassy’s tenure as CEO. Innovation has slowed, and there were huge misses on areas like AI.
What’s happening today also isn’t the result of “pandemic overhiring” or “AI efficiencies” but the cleanup of big messes that developed on the watch of present leadership. Andy Jassy preaches about company culture and efficiency but the culture went to crap and the company became bloated on his watch so…
Amazon likely needs new leadership to get it past the Andy Jassy chapter and move to a new phase of innovation and growth. It basically needs to replace its present Balmer with a Satya.
> there were huge misses on areas like AI
Honest question. What could they have possibly gained from AI? What did they miss out on by not getting into AI?
The only thing I can think of is if they had converted Alexa into a truly useful assistant and gotten people to sign up for a premium to it while everyone was still in awe of and having fun talking to LLMs.
Even if they executed this perfectly though, I think all it would do is increase the burn rate related to Alexa. Plus there's no moat, everyone has a phone with more capable hardware that would be a better place for this assistant to live long term.
I don't think they missed too much on the AI front. Bedrock was crap during formative LLM-solution building times, maybe that was a legitimate miss of theirs? SageMaker still is crap, another miss?
Bedrock is just hosting a bunch of different LLMs. It is just as capable as the third party LLMs it hosts. It hosts everything except for OpenAI and Gemini models as far as the popular ones. Even Nova, Amazon’s models, are good enough for the most part, cheaper and usually faster.
By rendang 2025-10-2820:29 I'm curious what are the shortcomings you find with SageMaker?
By jvanderbot 2025-10-2813:094 reply Have you noticed how bad their devices dept was gutted? I can easily imagine a proper AI system backing alexa, rolled out to all existing customers, which would potentially boost the viability of that whole product line.
right now I have no idea what Alexa is for anymore. It pings me when a package arrives but so does my phone. I can't order from it, because it makes me open the app. I can manage a shopping list I guess? I ask it the temp outside from time to time b/c I don't want to go look at the thermometer outside my window?
A proper device would discuss with me product options and Q&A, or something. Even piping Grok/GPT5 through to answer questions would be light years ahead of the current crap answers I get when I ask questions. And why doesn't it do a good job of identifying songs that are playing? That's trivial software, and it could recommend some songs like this (which is something I use GPT for).
I don't know I'm just a trad software engineer, but it sure seems like it's low risk / high improvement to at least have a modern LLM feature in that product.
There is absolutely nothing in the world I would like less than an AI device listening to all of my conversations at home.
Hard agree. Same for Siri.
I don't get why they just don't do it. There are jailbreaks, making it talk trash and so on, but is that the majority of users? I doubt it.
By aziaziazi 2025-10-2813:55 I use almost daily my google nest to set timers hand free while cooking, and managing radio playbacks: I’m an avid web radio listener.
The Alexa product as it is, is already lighting money on fire. Adding LLM integration to it would just be pouring gasoline on it; iirc inference is still not profitable even in easier sectors so Alexa would be a particularly bad place for it. (Even though it would be amazing UX, but I doubt enough people would pay the price it costs to break even).
AWS is probably in last place among computing clouds on AI and the AI managed services from AWS are pretty second-rate.
Amazon had Alexa (Echos) everywhere and that was teed up to knock it out of the park putting a real AI assistant in every home. Then the devices team totally blew it and did almost nothing to take advantage of that huge lead. Folks are now basically just throwing these things in the trash and the devices unit is a huge pit of cash on fire.
The list goes on…
By cmiles8 2025-10-2813:48 Not sure why you’re being downvoted. This is spot on. Likely Amazon and AWS folks in denial of where they really are relative to the market’s bar at the moment.
By JeremyNT 2025-10-2813:22 Surely b2b "model API provider" would've been a great fit for Amazon, but others are absolutely dominating this space right now.
The silver lining for Amazon is that nobody is making a profit by actually providing that service. It's just massive valuations and VC money flowing freely instead of a sustainable business model, and Amazon plays a much longer game - they can recover even if being so far behind is a "bad look" for their current management.
It's not hard to switch between OpenAI/Anthropic/Azure/Google/whatever and Amazon can surely eventually compete well in this space.
They had the infrastructure and muscle to put a dent into Google Search and Microsoft Enterprise software... but instead they've ceeded to OpenAI and Anthropic.
They had a bridgehead device of the type that OpenAI are struggling to create with Jonny Ive in Alexa... but nothing seems to be happening with Alexa now.
If Microsoft couldn’t compete with Google in search, how could Amazon? Even if the search were better, how do you get people to switch to it if Google is the default everywhere? Besides Alexa was losing billions when it was backed by the relatively cheap to run Amazon Lex pattern matching service. It would have lost more being backed by an LLM and it actually got worse from all indications.
By softwaredoug 2025-10-2813:14 Why am I calling Anthropic/Google/OpenAI APIs for my AI inference and not AWS ones? Even Azure has some decent AI inference endpoints I encounter with clients.
Never seen a single person use AWS for this.
What if I told you that Amazon has spent more money on AI this year than any other company? On track to spend nearly 150B by the end of the year?
By JCM9 2025-10-2814:09 I’d say leadership should be fired for having so little to show for it
By potro 2025-10-2821:38 Short term - higher stock evaluation. Long term - depends on what value AI bubble will be able to deliver. But it's not like Amazon is sitting out of this game, they do invest into their AI (Nova models), with little return to show for it.
By strict9 2025-10-2815:01 >It basically needs to replace its present Balmer with a Satya.
You had me all the wya until this line.
First, Andy led AWS to what it is today.
Second, Amazon had a problem before Andy took over. Way too many managers and incompetent people in very senior levels. The fact that he's doing something about it is a good thing for Amazon. You don't become a CEO of a behemoth such as Amazon and expect to show impact within 6 months. It takes years.
In terms of AI, they did invest in Anthropic early on and are a significant stakeholder. That's critical since Anthropic is a trillion dollar company in the making and they trump everyone in enterprise AI. They are much more likely to succeed with smart partnerships than doing their own thing.
1. Lots of cracks showing in AWS before he took the big job, lack of focus, bloat of too many services with too few users
2. He then hired Adam to take over AWS which didn’t work out well
3. Good to see he’s cleaning things up, but we’re past the “clean things up” phase for a CEO. He’s been in role for a while now. That should have been the first few years of his tenure.
4. Anthropic was a good investment, but Amazon is just one of many investors. It’s nothing like the partnership that MSFT and OpenAI have, which was further strengthened with today’s announcements there. Amazon has nothing comparable to counter that.
By tinyhouse 2025-10-2814:48 That's fair. I actually didn't realize it's been already 4+ years since he took over as CEO. I do think that we haven't heard the last word of Amazon Anthropic's partnership. Microsoft is already deep in OpenAI, and Google, while also a major stakeholder in Anthropic, directly competes with Gemini (API, code, etc). Amazon has foundation models but not really in the game, so this partnership is likely to continue. Both sides need it (Amazon for staying in the AI game and Anthropic for the resources and cash)
By coredog64 2025-10-2816:22 From the beginning Adam was intended to be an interim AWS CEO: They didn't have someone who was ready immediately, so Adam was the bridge. Unfortunately, Adam was the bridge to Matt Garman :(
By johnnyanmac 2025-10-295:16 >What’s happening today also isn’t the result of “pandemic overhiring” or “AI efficiencies” but the cleanup of big messes that developed on the watch of present leadership.
It's the result of economic headwinds and companies switching to maintenance mode. Except whever they can sell "AI" in their initiative. And of course, add in a healthy dose of outsourcing under the hood.
By willsmith72 2025-10-2813:34 Yeah that was my read too, I'm anticipating more rounds over the next few months
Once a company moves on to recurring, large-scale layoffs justified by vague corporate Mumbo-Jumbo, I think it is safe to assume it is a "day 2" company.
By JCM9 2025-10-2813:16 The original shareholder letter said the company wouldn’t pander to Wall Street or focus on short term improvements. It’s now slashing jobs a few days before earnings to try and placate Wall Street since it can’t grow via innovation. That’s all the proof you need to see that Amazon is now in full “Day 2” mode.
I was not aware of this term before.
For others: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/jeff-bezos-day-1-versus-2-com...
By 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2025-10-2812:336 reply Non-LinkedIn version: https://ourdinnertable.wordpress.com/2025/05/06/jeff-bezos-d...
> “Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by death. And that’s why it’s always Day 1.”
Sharks don't look back, cause they don't have necks. Necks are for sheep
Is this one of those things that are meant to sound deep and profound by inventing terminology, but isn't? That's such a like day 2 person thing to do.
(Actually don't know if I used day 2 correctly, feels a bit like trying to use skibidi ohio in a sentence)
By Modified3019 2025-10-2813:27 Had completely forgotten that futurama bit: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FvrcvPNpdd8
By pavel_lishin 2025-10-2813:06 Which is the one people like to hug?
By reaperducer 2025-10-2813:112 reply Sharks don't look back, cause they don't have necks. Necks are for sheep
Sharks eat sheep?
By VBprogrammer 2025-10-2812:274 reply I'm not really sure how this fits with Amazon's corporate culture. I thought all of the dead wood good pip'ed out of there on an ongoing basis.
If people are surviving that then who are are the people being ejected? Unprofitable areas or new products which didn't pan out?
By Covenant0028 2025-10-2812:522 reply My theory is that when an organization descends into a cycle of repetitive downsizings, it inevitably leads to people focusing more on protecting their jobs than on business value.
By the process of natural selection, the people who survive such rounds of firings are the ones with the political skills to survive them. Some of those guys will be star performers, but most will simply be politicians. Over time, this process will result in an increase in the ratio of politicians to star performers.
My company’s been through layoffs/reorgs every 3–6 months for three years. One thing is true: performance management happens faster. Many chronic low performers were laid off, and a few “too many cooks” problems were resolved. Those benefits are real and genuine.
But it’s a mistake to assume the remainder is automatically high‑performer‑only. Three patterns I’ve seen:
1) People with options leave first. If you can find a stable, supportive org at similar pay, you go. That’s often your top performers. We've lost some truly amazing people who left because they were simply not willing to tolerate working here anymore. Being absolutely ruthless in getting rid of low performers is honestly not worth it when you also lose the people who truly move the needle on creating new products, etc. If you make a mistake and get rid of some people who were talented high-performers, trust is instantly gone. The remaining high-performers now know that they may also be a target, and so they won't trust you and they'll leave whenever they can. And when you're axing 10k+ people, you're absolutely going to make mistakes.
2) The survivors change. Trust and empathy plummet. Incentives tilt toward optics and defensiveness, and managers start competing on visible ruthlessness. You can keep the lights on, but actually trying to innovate in this environment is too scary and risky.
3) In an atmosphere of fear, people who are willing to be genuinely dishonest and manipulative -- and who are good enough at it to get away with it -- have a serious competitive advantage. I've seen good, compassionate leaders go from a healthy willingness to make tough decisions on occasion to basically acting like complete psychopaths. Needless to say, that's extremely corrosive to meaningful output. While you could argue that skillful dishonesty is an individual advantage regardless of climate, an environment of repeat layoffs strongly incentivizes this behavior by reducing empathy, rewarding "do whatever it takes to win" behavior, etc.
Unless you are in the position of Zuckerberg or the Google founders, everyone’s main motivation is to keep their jobs.
If you are just an employee - it’s beyond naive to prioritize anything but your own job. Of course I am not advocating back stabbing and throwing others under the bus. Getting ahead in BigTech is always about playing politics and getting on the right projects to show “impact”.
By reaperducer 2025-10-2813:12 I thought all of the dead wood good pip'ed out of there on an ongoing basis.
Local TV says it's because too many people caved in to the return-to-work demand.
By xnx 2025-10-2815:18 First employees work for the customer, then they work for the company, then they work for themselves. Sounds like Amazon is between the 2nd and 3rd stage.
By llmslave 2025-10-2812:44 there are alot of tenured people that are good at politics, but dont provide much actual value
Or they know something that the current Administration does not (or is withholding)? Maybe it's time to buckle up for a coming economic storm.
By pjc50 2025-10-2813:09 I wonder if the company that makes part of its money from consumer goods shipped from China knows something about the impact of tariffs on consumer spending. They've probably already assessed the impact on their models of Black Friday and Christmas purchases and decided it looks bad.
(most of their money is from AWS, though. I wonder if AI is making that less stock-relevant.)
Oh no, they might only make $15 billion instead of $18 billion next quarter?
By Hendrikto 2025-10-2812:55 > coming economic storm
We are already in it.
By onlyrealcuzzo 2025-10-2813:211 reply Don't worry, when ZIRP returns, they'll be a day 1 company again.
People mistook ZIRP for genius for 25 years.
By lotsofpulp 2025-10-2813:331 reply This is a little exaggerated, considering ZIRP was 2009 to 2022, 13 years, and came well after Amazon had established its trajectory.
And they did kind of successfully roll out a global logistics network, at a time when no one thought anyone could compete with Walmart. And they became leaders in the cloud computing space.
These aren't trivial accomplishments solely enabled by ZIRP.
By EasyMark 2025-10-2820:09 I think stuff like this will eventually pull Bezos back in.
By johnnyanmac 2025-10-295:22 Is there any non-day 2 company in this day and age? Seems like everyone's laying off en masse. Even the job reports can't hide it.
If you're not working in nursing the flux of retired Baby boomers you're either already rich or on unsteady ground.
