Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On Nov. 20, American retail giant Amazon began its largest layoff in its history this week and will continue until 2023. Now that the layoffs have been going on for a week, what impact it has had on Amazon. According to BI, the mainstream US online media, Amazon, which has been the engine of job growth for more than a decade, has suddenly stopped and the painful adjustment has only just begun.

As early as October 18, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (Jeff Bezos) tweeted that companies should "plan ahead" in the face of a possible recession.

A series of inside information obtained by BI over the past two months shows that the company's managers are trying to identify underperforming employees and use performance improvement plans to force them to leave. In late September, a compliance manager instructed colleagues: "Please find out who you think is the worst performer and get back to me by 10:00 tomorrow morning." By mid-October, the company had closed or scaled back several teams, including its robotics division.

Soon after, a senior manager at AWS, Amazon's cloud computing division, ordered to stop hiring and "evaluate your team members as soon as possible", referring to letting employees compete with each other in an attempt to force the lowest ranked employees to leave. "I know the news sounds mixed, but we need to recruit quickly and identify a few employees we think are not suitable for our growth ambitions," the executive said. "

The next day, Amazon announced a company-wide hiring freeze, but that still didn't seem to be enough. On November 15th Amazon began its most extensive corporate layoffs in its history. It is reported to have cut about 10, 000 jobs.

For more than a decade, Amazon has been a powerful engine of US job growth for more than a decade, building a vast network of warehouses run by hundreds of thousands of employees and launching a series of ambitious projects such as audio platform Amp, video streaming service Luna, tourism division Explore and satellite Internet project Kuiper. In addition, Amazon has made efforts in consumer electronics, with products such as the home robot Astro, fitness tracking wristband Halo and children's tablet computer Glow.

The massive layoffs this week mark the end of this incredible rate of growth. Many ambitious plans have been aborted, while others are half-dead. The online shopping spree during the epidemic has come to an abrupt end, prompting the company to sublease unused warehouse space. Hundreds of recruiters have left, indicating that hiring will continue to decline.

Amazon has slashed the headcount of several Alexa teams, including those dedicated to making Alexa sound more human, such as learning new skills and answering questions more creatively. Amazon has also made significant layoffs of its Luna team and offered voluntary buyout (voluntary departure) options to recruiters in the US and India.

Later this week, employees in Amazon's retail business learned that they would also face layoffs once the holiday shopping season ends.

Executives are shocked and employees question the sudden change from crazy hiring to massive layoffs, which also seems to shock Amazon's leadership. Although Andy Jassy, Amazon's chief executive, confirmed that the layoffs would last until 2023, executives have remained surprisingly silent over the past week, sharing few details with employees. This forces employees to look around for any useful pieces of information. Over time, this information vacuum is causing more anxiety, anger and doubt about the future.

After the New York Times initially reported that Amazon planned to cut 10000 jobs, employees in the company's equipment division, including Alexa and Luna, received mysterious invitations to meet with executives and human resources. On internal Slack channels and social media, employees asked frantically whether receiving such an invitation meant they would be fired. An employee asked, "is this what I think it is?"

As of Tuesday morning local time, Amazon employees had created a dedicated Slack channel to share information about layoffs and compiled a list of departments that might be affected. At the same time, they also made a "safety list" of teams that might avoid mass layoffs. In the absence of leadership communication, the channel has grown rapidly to nearly 20,000 members.

Using the function of allowing employees to post anonymously, laid-off employees talk openly about their feelings. Migrant workers worry that they will not be able to find employers who are willing to guarantee their work visas to avoid being forced to leave the United States. Some Amazon employees say they were fired during a serious illness or pregnancy. Employees ask again and again if anyone knows if their team is safe.

One employee wrote: "I don't know how to tell my children the news. They used to be proud that their father was a member of Amazon's Alexa team. But now, I'm very worried."

The most common emotion on Amazon's employees' Slack channel is anger, which is usually directed at Amazon executives. One employee wrote: "Meta employees at least got the news from its chief executive, Mark Zack himself. But we heard about the layoffs in the media on Monday, and we were very frustrated by the attitude of the'S team'." He was referring to a memo sent by Zuckerberg to employees announcing that the company would lay off 13% of its staff.

Another employee wrote: "when is the next staff meeting where we can submit questions to team S? I have a few questions." One of the most important is: how do you plan to win back the trust that was completely destroyed in November? "the third employee wrote:" to some extent, we must stop calling them leaders. "

Employees also comfort and support each other. Some have passed on the "bizarre incident response Table," a single-page document developed by Amazon's product manager to help deal with times of crisis. Others promised to share LinkedIn profiles of laid-off colleagues on their social networks.

The Alexa team was hit hardest on Wednesday, when Amazon executives began to confirm what many employees already know from the media or Slack: the equipment department has been overhauled and more layoffs are under way.

In a memo to employees, Dave Limp, head of Amazon equipment, blamed adverse economic conditions for the layoffs. "past experience tells us that when faced with financial difficulties, customers tend to be attracted to the companies and products they think have the best customer experience and take care of them the most," he wrote. Amazon has historically done a very good job in this respect. "

LinkedIn posts by Amazon laid-off employees showed that the team responsible for Alexa's artificial intelligence system, natural language understanding and dialogue capabilities were the hardest hit by the layoffs.

The layoffs indicate that Amazon plans to further reduce the size of Alexa. Amazon has known for years that customers mainly use Alexa to play music, control lights and set timers, according to reports. But as Amazon continues to invest heavily in developing increasingly powerful features for the virtual assistant, the unit has lost billions of dollars.

Retail department holiday post-season layoffs in Amazon's vast retail division, some employees learned on Thursday morning that their department might be affected by layoffs after the holiday shopping peak, which made many employees wonder if they should stick to their jobs. One employee said: "We have no motivation to work at all."

In a memo sent to all employees on Thursday afternoon, Mr. Jassi confirmed that the layoffs would last until 2023 and affect retail and human resources departments. In the letter, he expressed his guilt.

"I have been in this position for a year and a half, and there is no doubt that this is the most difficult decision we have made during this period," Jassi wrote. I and any leader who made these decisions understand that we need to eliminate not only these roles, but also those who are emotional, ambitious and responsible, whose lives will be affected. "

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