Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has opened up about the company’s recent layoffs, which affected around 14,000 employees. Contrary to popular belief, he said the decision wasn’t about cutting costs or the rise of artificial intelligence. Instead, Jassy pointed to a deeper reason behind the move — company culture. “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 at least,” he said, as quoted by Business Insider. “It really — it’s culture.”
A Cultural Reset at Amazon
Andy Jassy’s comments reflect Amazon’s ongoing push to reshape its internal culture. As reported by Business Insider, he has been focused on raising performance standards, tightening discipline, and cutting down on unnecessary bureaucracy to make the company more efficient and agile.
During the earnings call, Jassy acknowledged that Amazon’s rapid expansion over the years had added “a lot more layers,” which ended up slowing down how decisions are made. He emphasised that the company now needs to “operate leaner and move faster,” particularly as artificial intelligence continues to reshape industries worldwide.
“Sometimes, without realizing it, you can weaken the ownership of the people that you have who are doing the actual work,” Jassy said. “And it can lead to slowing you down.” In a blog post on October 28, Amazon’s senior vice president of people experience and technology, Beth Galetti, also confirmed that the company is “making organizational changes across Amazon that will impact some of our teammates.”
“While this will include reducing in some areas and hiring in others, it will mean an overall reduction in our corporate workforce of approximately 14,000 roles,” she said. This marks Amazon’s largest round of layoffs since 2022, when about 27,000 employees were let go. Interestingly, Jassy’s recent comments contrast with what other Amazon executives have previously said about the reasons behind the job cuts.
The decision also reflects a broader trend across Big Tech. Giants like Google and Microsoft are undergoing what many call the “Great Flattening” — cutting down layers of management to speed up decision-making and eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy.
