On Monday, Amazon announced they would be laying off hundreds of staff members at their corporate offices.
The layoffs will take place mainly in their consumer retail businesses, as the tech giant looks to consolidate “redundant” leadership roles to make room for a heavier focus on new areas outside of books, clothes, and groceries.
From bender to ender
Over the past few years, Amazon’s Seattle offices have been on a hiring spree, booming from a lean 5k employees in 2010 to 40k in 2017.
Their growth spurt reportedly left some units over budget, with a low work-to-staff ratio, which led to an abrupt hiring freeze back in December.
The hold reduced the company’s job listings in Seattle to their lowest in years, creating an ominous air around the employees of Amazon as rumors of a “re-org” pedaled about their grassy campus.
Though, amid cuts, they’ve started hiring again
While hundreds of layoffs for a corporate giant seem relatively common, this move is in fact quite rare for Amazon — a company who, according to the Seattle Times, prides themselves on “frugality, and efficient allocation of resources.”
In fact, even in light of the cuts, they have actually upped their global workforce by 66% in the last year, with more than 4k job listings currently on their site as they look to “double down” on areas like AWS and Alexa software.