Amazon’s latest round of corporate layoffs is about culture, not artificial intelligence, according to CEO Andy Jassy. On an earnings call, the CEO said the decision to cut roles did not come from AI displacing jobs but rather from how the company wants to operate — fast, flat, and with more individual ownership. The announcement comes after Amazon confirmed a significant corporate reduction of 14,000 roles, with leadership pointing to more “layer removal” to come.
Decoding what culture means inside Amazon’s operations
Jassy said Amazon had become too big and multi-layered over its years of rapid expansion, with “too many people, too many layers, too many lines of business that run parallel or overlay the other,” aiming to run the company like “the world’s largest startup.”
- Decoding what culture means inside Amazon’s operations
- The scale of layoffs and where cuts are landing now
- AI as backdrop, not catalyst, in Amazon’s recent layoffs
- Financial signals and market reaction to Amazon’s cuts
- Employee impact, tradeoffs, and industry comparisons
- Key signals to watch as Amazon pursues delayering
The push isn’t new: Jassy previously introduced a “bureaucracy” inbox for employees to send slow and redundant processes, and he’s long connected performance reviews to executives’ speed of invention. He described addressing natural headcount and removing layers and the bureaucracies that often come with them.
The scale of layoffs and where cuts are landing now
While sources suggest employees in HR, devices, services, and operations are confirmed to have been impacted, the cuts affect a spread of additional organizations. More “layer removal” and efficiency efforts are coming, say multiple leadership sources, with reports suggesting up to 30,000 total corporate roles could be in scope. Amazon has cautioned employees not to speculate on the rumored number.
This is not Amazon’s first retrenchment. The organization cut 27,000 jobs in recent years during industry-wide corrections. Amazon’s whole workforce was around 1.55 million at midyear, which shows how these corporate reductions are more specialized in comparison with the overall.
AI as backdrop, not catalyst, in Amazon’s recent layoffs
Shortly before the layoffs were declared, Amazon HR leader Beth Galetti sent a formal announcement to workers. It mentioned the urgency to go faster in AI and organize more leanly to keep up. Because of the way it was framed, many concluded that AI was the reason. Jassy, however, said these layoffs were “not really AI-driven” — not for now, and more about organizational design.
This nuance is critical. Although Amazon spends heavily on speech recognition technology, developers, and the Bedrock system, Jassy’s main point is that remodeling the structure — removing lateral layers of management and boosting organization — is the proximate leverage to increase velocity, no matter what effect AI has in the long run.
Financial signals and market reaction to Amazon’s cuts
Amazon cut jobs at the same time as it published a strong result. According to the New York Times, the company made $18 billion in profit in its most recent quarter. Following the earnings declaration, CNBC stated that shares climbed roughly 12%.
When profits are strong, cutting headcount is a clear indication. It suggests the company is concentrating on managerial responsibility and the reallocation of resources rather than survival. In other words, Amazon is shifting money and capabilities to its most critical areas and big bets — most notably AWS and AI-focused services. Removing layers can hasten decision-making and enable work to be spread in parallel. Even during a growth stage, it can boost margins, a characteristic Wall Street admires.
Employee impact, tradeoffs, and industry comparisons
Impacted staff are being offered about 90 days to seek internal transfers before severance, along with transition support and benefits. Some employees have already shared their departures on social platforms, underscoring the human cost of what leadership casts as a cultural refresh.
There are known tradeoffs. Research from firms like Gartner and McKinsey has found delayering can shrink cycle times and clarify accountability, but it also risks overloading remaining managers and diminishing institutional knowledge if departures cluster in key domains. Amazon’s execution will hinge on whether teams gain true autonomy — or simply inherit broader scopes without commensurate support.
Amazon isn’t alone in reorganizing while leaning into AI. Meta recently cut roles inside its AI organization, arguing smaller, faster teams are essential. Across tech, companies are using profitable windows to reshape structures and shift capital toward data centers, model partnerships, and AI platforms. Separate from corporate roles, warehouse automation continues to draw scrutiny. Reporting from major outlets has suggested automation could reduce future hiring needs in fulfillment. Amazon has pointed to hundreds of thousands of seasonal jobs to argue technology augments rather than replaces workers. That tension mirrors the corporate conversation: AI and automation are strategic priorities, but leadership asserts today’s white-collar cuts are about how the company operates — not machines taking jobs.
Key signals to watch as Amazon pursues delayering
Signals to watch include:
- Additional delayering pace in 2026
- Productivity per employee
- Time-to-launch of new services
- AWS capital spending
Jassy’s culture thesis: ship more, ship faster, ship with fewer handoffs. By execution, not rhetoric for now, Amazon wants investors to judge; the bet is unequivocal. Fewer layers, more ownership — the company is structured to enable running at startup speed. AI spending may pick up, but not because of today’s cuts.
