Amazon laid off “several hundred” employees on Wednesday within the MGM Studios, Prime Video, and Twitch divisions. Employees were let go in an email sent by Senior Vice President Mike Hopkins.
“Throughout the past yr, we have looked at nearly every aspect of our business with a watch towards improving our ability to deliver much more breakthrough movies, TV shows, and live sports in a customized, easy to make use of entertainment experience for our global customers,” Hopkins wrote within the memo that was obtained by CNBC. “Because of this, we have identified opportunities to scale back or discontinue investments in certain areas while increasing our investment and deal with content and product initiatives that deliver probably the most impact. Because of this of these decisions, we shall be eliminating several hundred roles across the Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios organization.”
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Hopkins called the choice to slash staffers “difficult” and noted that the layoffs were global and will take up to 1 week for all affected employees to be contacted.
“It is difficult to say goodbye to talented Amazonians who’ve made meaningful contributions on behalf of our customers, team and business,” he said. “Thanks to your dedication and work.”
Individually, at the live-streaming unit Twitch, which Amazon acquired in 2014, 500 staffers were cut on Wednesday.
Last yr, Amazon initiated the most important round of layoffs in company history when CEO Andy Jassy announced that the corporate can be letting go of 18,000 staff, citing a difficult economic time and rapid hirings within the years prior amid the pandemic.
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Amazon had a powerful Q3 2023 after jumping 13% in revenue amid cost-cutting initiatives.
“We had a powerful third quarter as our cost to serve and speed of delivery in our Stores business took one other step forward, our AWS growth continued to stabilize, our Promoting revenue grew robustly, and overall operating income and free money flow rose significantly,” Jassy said at the time.
It’s estimated that the corporate has laid off 27,000 employees since last fall.
Amazon was up over 61% yr over yr as of Wednesday afternoon.