Amazon Accidentally Alerts Staff to Fresh Round of Layoffs
Amazon has inadvertently confirmed another wave of job cuts after an internal email referencing ongoing layoffs was mistakenly shared with employees.
The draft message, written by Colleen Aubrey, a senior vice president at Amazon Web Services (AWS), was attached to a calendar invitation sent late Tuesday by an executive assistant. The invitation, which reached a number of staff members, included details of redundancies affecting workers in the United States, Canada and Costa Rica.
The message, later cancelled, indicated that the cuts were part of efforts to “strengthen the company.” Amazon declined to comment when contacted.
The calendar invite was titled “Send Project Dawn email,” widely understood by employees to be an internal code name for the latest round of job reductions. Although the email confirmed that layoffs were underway, affected staff had not yet been formally notified.
According to the draft message, the cuts form part of a restructuring programme aimed at reducing management layers, cutting bureaucracy and speeding up decision-making across the business and AWS in particular.
Amazon announced 14,000 job losses in October, and a further round of cuts had been widely anticipated inside the company. A former employee, who asked not to be named, said staff had expected Amazon to eliminate about 30,000 roles in total, with additional redundancies likely to continue through to May.
Employees affected by earlier layoffs were encouraged to apply for open positions elsewhere within the company, though the number of available roles was limited. Those unable to secure new positions received severance packages linked to their length of service.
The accidental disclosure comes amid a prolonged period of job cuts across the global technology sector. Since 2022, companies including Amazon, Meta, Google and Microsoft have collectively laid off tens of thousands of workers each year. Industry tracker Layoffs.fyi estimates that around 700,000 tech jobs have been lost over the past four years.
Amazon has carried out repeated restructuring exercises since founder Jeff Bezos stepped down as chief executive in 2021. Under his successor, Andy Jassy, the company has tightened costs and pushed for a stricter workplace culture, including a mandatory five-day office attendance policy.
The company has also taken steps to curb spending, including monitoring corporate phone reimbursements, and recently announced plans to shut its remaining Amazon-branded grocery stores while expanding its Whole Foods Market chain.
In a message to staff ahead of Thanksgiving, Jassy described the current period at Amazon as one that requires the company to “rethink everything we’ve ever done,” citing rapid changes in the global business environment.
