Current Events > Amazon will commence an AI drive restructure; laying off 15% of HR

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Amazon is planning a new wave of layoffs, sources say | Fortune https://share.google/qH85CmbAx43oq64Qs

Amazon is preparing to cut as much as 15% of its human resources staff, with additional layoffs likely in other divisions, according to multiple sources familiar with the plans.

Two sources told Fortune that Amazons human resources divisionknown internally as PXT or the People eXperience Technology teamwill be hard-hit, but that other areas of Amazons core consumer business are also likely to be affected. It couldnt be learned how many employees in total Amazon plans to let go, nor the exact timing of the cuts.

The company laid off relatively small numbers of employees earlier this year in areas such as its consumer devices unit, its Wondery podcast division, and in Amazon Web Services.

Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel declined to comment.

Amazons PXT division, which reports to senior vice president Beth Galetti, has more than 10,000 employees worldwide, and includes a large recruiting team, plus technology staff and other traditional HR roles.

The new cuts come as Amazon continues to look for ways to lower employee costs while investing aggressively in AI products and infrastructureboth for internal use and to sell to enterprise customers. The company has said it intends to devote upwards of $100 billion to capital expenditures this year, as it builds out its cloud and AI data centers.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy already oversaw the largest layoffs in company history from late 2022 into 2023, when the company cut at least 27,000 corporate jobs, which accounted for a high-single-digit percentage of the companys office jobs. Many other Big Tech companies also slashed their headcounts around that time as the pandemic receded and consumer demand trends changed.

Now, many employers are looking to harness the power of AIinitially for mundane and repetitive tasks and eventually for more complicated jobsto reduce the need to maintain the same level of human staffers on their payrolls.

Jassy himself is one of them. The CEO fired a bit of a warning shot to his own employees in June, when he encouraged them to welcome this new AI-powered era.

Those who embrace this change, become conversant in AI, help us build and improve our AI capabilities internally and deliver for customers, will be well-positioned to have high impact and help us reinvent the company, he wrote in a companywide email that was also published on Amazons corporate blog.

At the same time, Jassy also made a point to note that there wont be room on the bus for everyone: We expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.

Jassy, who succeeded Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in the CEO job in 2021, has earned a reputation as a cost-cutter (though to be fair, he inherited a company that many say had become wasteful and bloated in some areas). Amazon executives regularly require managers to hit a certain percentage goal for unregretted attrition, or URAessentially a percentage of employees that the company would be okay losing, whether through voluntary departures, being managed out, or through formal layoffs. But sources told Fortune that these cuts are being discussed in a different way internally than the typical URA process.

While Amazon plans these layoffs of corporate roles, the company announced its usual holiday hiring spree of warehouse staff on Tuesday. This year, the company will hire 250,000 seasonal employees across its U.S. warehouse and logistics networks.

White and blue collar jobs are in danger unless you are high enough on the totem pole for it not to matter.

I am reminded why I don't buy from amazon anymore.

HR does seem to be pretty hard hit by ai

yep the job market for blue collar jobs will be fucked the coming years and it will take the AI bubble bursting to slow it down but the future is bleak with how head first these corpo's are diving into AI
and god hunting for jobs will be more garbage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX6MESvqggQ&t=1s

Dat_Cracka_Jax posted...

HR does seem to be pretty hard hit by ai

Turns out you don't need a human being to respond with no by default and then vaguely reference a bunch of corporate policy documents whenever something needs doing.

Let's say these corpo fucks get what they want and replace the entire workforce with AI. What are the huge surge in unemployed people supposed to do? They do know people need to have money to buy their shit, right?

Seeing this, I can only be reminded of all the times Fox News was circling jerking to how AI will create and provide jobs for people. lel

i don't like this. prefer to talk to someone.

not to AI computer.

Ivynn posted...

Let's say these corpp fucks get what they want and replace the entire workforce with AI. What are the huge surge in unemployed people supposed to do? They do know people need to have money to buy their shit, right?

They seem determined to spark a revolution that won't end well for them.

Bass posted...

They seem determined to spark a revolution that won't end well for them.

Or a genocide that will end especially well for them

Corpo is such an idiotic word, that makes everyone using it look like a whining child. We can talk about how this and big business in general is without it.

suchiuomizu posted...

Corpo is such an idiotic word, that makes everyone using it look like a whining child. We can talk about how this and big business in general is without it.

I ain't typin more letters than I need :p

kingdrake2 posted...

i don't like this. prefer to talk to someone.

not to AI computer.

https://youtu.be/U0YkPnwoYyE?si=x81SHrE_11mfPfXd

AI replacing HR feels like something you'd read in a comic book. On the surface, it seems like it shouldn't make sense, but when you look closer, in a circular way... it still doesn't make sense. And yet, they published it anyway.

This is especially dumb because "ai" as it stands now is going to fail to do this right and they will end up having to hire more people

Deteled posted...

This is especially dumb because "ai" as it stands now is going to fail to do this right and they will end up having to hire more people

Doubtful. It's only 15% and more likely than not more layoffs will come. A lot of HR positions, like legal research positions, are completely useless and obsolete now with AI.

voldothegr8 posted...

Doubtful. It's only 15% and more likely than not more layoffs will come. A lot of HR positions, like legal research positions, are completely useless and obsolete now with AI.

you are being sarcastic right.........right

the workers better fast track getting unionized

gikos posted...

you are being sarcastic right.........right

Either you work in HR or you've never interacted with HR if you can't understand why some people would say that the HR department is one of the most replaceable roles against AI. You don't need human cognition to cross check a request against well documented corporate policy and then answer based on that policy.

jefffan posted...

The new cuts come as Amazon continues to look for ways to lower employee costs while investing aggressively in AI products and infrastructure

Fuck Amazon and every company doing this shit (which is just about all of them).

s0nicfan posted...

Either you work in HR or you've never interacted with HR if you can't understand why some people would say that the HR department is one of the most replaceable roles against AI. You don't need human cognition to cross check a request against well documented corporate policy and then answer based on that policy.

i didn't work in HR it's just there was a time a HR manager had the backs of workers on my old jobs so they are needed to help protect workers. tho i did have a run in with shitty HR who screwed me over and my benifits so seeing them replaced does tickle me but i dread the fallout of how fucked over people will get from here with corpos using AI

gikos posted...

i didn't work in HR it's just there was a time a HR manager had the backs of workers on my old jobs so they are needed to help protect workers. tho i did have a run in with shitty HR who screwed me over and my benifits so seeing them replaced does tickle me but i dread the fallout of how fucked over people will get from here with corpos using AI

I'll be fair and say that good HR folks exist. It's just in my experience that is overwhelmingly not the case. The old adage is it's called "human resources" because their job is to treat humans as resources, rather than being a resource for humans.

The thing is, those good HR folks are not likely part of companies big enough to be able to do things like put an AI in place. They're the folks in smaller companies with independence and leeway in making decisions because they don't have 10 layers of corporate hierarchy strictly bounding what they can actually do. But if we're measuring the level of disdain in the form of "how fucked over people" get from a position, HR is just as bad as the corpos calling for AI because at the end of the day they're the gatekeepers directly responsible for fucking people over on a daily basis.