Amazon employees live in fear, look for clues as co on layoff spree

After massive job cuts by Twitter and Facebook, Amazon has initiated the process of laying off 10,000 of its employees, nearly 13 per cent of its workforce, to be able to deal with the “current macroeconomic environment.”

In a letter to employees, senior vice president of Devices and Services Dave Limp informed employees about the management’s decision to consolidate certain teams and programmes and asked many to either choose other roles within the company in two months’ time or settle for the severance package as some roles will no longer be required.

Reports say the most affected by the layoffs are likely to be employees in retail, human resources, and technology roles including in the Luna cloud gaming unit and the Alexa virtual assistant business.

Some fired in ‘secret,’ others wait for the ‘news’

The news has given anxious days and sleepless nights to thousands of Amazon employees who are wondering if they are among the ones on the firing line while many have expressed annoyance over the company’s lack of transparency in the layoff exercise.

Reports say that top executives of the company are yet to come clear on the names that have been chosen to be taken off the rolls, leaving employees to play the guessing game.

“The truth of the matter is that if the company was more transparent, we wouldn’t have this shitshow. Now you have most of the population wondering if they are next,” a senior company manager told Recode.

Also read: Amazon begins mass layoffs; says ‘some roles will longer be required’

On the other hand, some employees, have been “secretly” shown the door during meetings on Tuesday.

According to Washington Post, on Tuesday, managers in several departments held meetings with employees and gave them two months to find another position within the company or accept the severance package.

“It’s all gone down very secretly. On Tuesday, some of us got meeting requests from human resources and a manager, and that was a dead give-away,” Bloomberg quoted a worker who was sacked in a 10-minute meeting, as saying.

With no clarity on the layoff process, several employees are living in fear of being the next one to be sacked and say the entire episode has disillusioned them against working for the company.

“I don’t even know if I want to work for this company anymore. This is a horrendous way to treat people,” another senior manager was quoted as saying by IANS.

 Anxiety, sad emojis, nervous jokes fill internal chat rooms  

Similar conversations floated on the internal chat room of the company with many hanging on clues gleaned from one another to know who will be asked to leave and who will remain.

According to reports, those anticipating of being sacked are asking those who have been fired about possible red signals including subject lines of HR emails.

“How can we expect to be earth’s greatest employer if literally everyone in the company is trying to figure out if they will be keeping their jobs,” an employee wrote in an internal chat, according to Bloomberg.

Reports said several senior colleagues were heard of consoling juniors who were laid off by telling them that they will find better opportunities elsewhere.

Also read: How Elon Musk’s ruthless layoffs, summary firings paint him as an employer

A pregnant worker who was laid off was bid adieu by colleagues through weeping emojis.

Some employees also tried to defuse the situation by cracking jokes such as writing that they have been “promoted to customer.”

Amazon is not Facebook

Condemning the ‘cold-blooded’ manner in which the retrenchments were being carried out, several employees sought to know why Amazon’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Andy Jassy didn’t address them the way Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg spoke to his employees while announcing 11,000 job cuts.

Calling it “some of the most difficult changes in Meta’s history,” Zuckerberg in a statement to employees last week took accountability for the layoffs and apologised to those who were impacted.

A clip of a leaked video call also showed Zuckerberg addressing employees and calling the layoffs the hardest decision in 18 years.

“There must be a range of emotions. I am the founder and CEO and responsible for the health and direction of our company and for deciding how we execute that including decisions like that. This was ultimately my call. It was one of the hardest calls I had to make in the 18 years of the running of the company,” he was seen saying in the video.