Amazon Takes Its Time Delivering Second Round of Job Cuts

Amazon is in the lead! The e-commerce behemoth has moved ahead of Alphabet in the contest to win this year’s IBM Cup, awarded occasionally to the most bureaucratic and slow-moving big tech company around. That’s one takeaway from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s explanation today for cutting another 9,000 jobs, on top of the 18,000 layoffs already announced. Jassy said in November the job cuts flowed out of Amazon’s “annual operating planning review.” Today he explained that Amazon didn’t cut the jobs all at once because “not all of the teams were done with their analyses in the late fall.” Jassy’s explanation implies Amazon took nearly six months to complete a planning review that is by definition meant to occur every year. 

It’s a good thing Amazon’s parcel deliveries don’t operate on this leisurely time frame! As Jassy has said, Amazon executives use these reviews to “look at each of our businesses and make decisions about what we believe we should change.” If that process stretches over a five- to six-month period, then Amazon is going to be constantly trying to catch up to changes in the business environment that have occurred while the review was underway. Look at the layoffs unveiled today, which will affect advertising and Amazon Web Services, among other units. These had been two bright spots in the company’s empire, although even their growth has slowed lately, reflecting the broader environment. But the slowdown in the ad market, at least, was evident last spring. Amazon should have made the cuts in advertising months ago.