Why Are 16,000 Job Cuts Happening At Amazon?

Reports of Amazon job cuts have been circulated since late 2025, with speculation centred around whether AI adoption or cultural shift are the root cause.

The firm has now confirmed that it will cut 16,000 jobs as part of its efforts to streamline its operations.

Shared in a blog post on Amazon News, Beth Galetti, Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology at Amazon, wrote: "I recognise this is difficult news, which is why I'm sharing what's happening and why.

"As I shared in October, we've been working to strengthen our organisation by reducing layers, increasing ownership and removing bureaucracy. While many teams finalised their organisational changes in October, other teams did not complete that work until now."

Beth added that the firm is working with the 16,000 people to "support everyone whose role is impacted".

This follows an earlier draft email from Colleen Aubrey, a Senior Vice President at Amazon Web Services, which was included as part of a calendar invitation to a number of Amazon workers on 27 January. The email was removed shortly after.

Seen by the BBC, the invitation was titled “Send Project Dawn email”, which is widely seen as a code name for job cuts at the multi-billion dollar company.

It was reported that, in the email, Colleen refers to employees in the US, Canada and Costa Rica having been laid off.

“This is a continuation of the work we’ve been doing for more than a year to strengthen the company by reducing layers, increasing ownership and removing bureaucracy, so that we can move faster for companies,” the email said, according to the BBC.

It added: “Changes like this are hard on everyone. These decisions are difficult and made thoughtfully as we position our organisation and AWS for future success.”

Amazon's 14,000 job cuts

In October 2025, Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy spoke about the thousands of job cuts in the company, claiming the move was not based on financial grounds.

“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,” Andy said at the firm’s quarter earnings call on 30 October.

His reason for the 14,000 corporate job cuts: “It’s culture.”

Discussing how the firm has increased headcount significantly in recent years, he said: “You end up with a lot more people than what you had before, and you end up with a lot more layers.

“Sometimes without realising it, you can weaken the ownership of the people that you have who are doing the actual work and who own most of the two-way door decisions.”

Changes to Amazon’s work culture

Andy had sought to streamline layers of management previously in 2025 to ensure the company operates like “the world’s largest startup”.

In late 2024, the CEO also issued a memo to employees saying that to operate like a startup, the ecommerce giant would “end its previous hybrid work policy”, meaning corporate staff has to return to the office full-time.

Andy said that this approach demands “a mix of constant invention, high ownership, strong urgency and shared commitment” and aims to “increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers, improve innovation and deepen collaboration” by flattening the organisation.

He added to this in his 2024 letter to shareholders “The leadership team has to believe it’s a priority, reinforce it constantly, organise and remove structural barriers and build in modular ways that enable pace

“But speed does not happen unless the entire company and culture embrace it.”