Technology giant Amazon has begun laying off staff, according to posts on LinkedIn from workers who say they have been affected by the job cuts.
It was reported this week that the company plans to cut 10,000 jobs, or about 3 percent of its office staff.
Amazon did not immediately respond to the JEE News’s request for comment.
It comes as thousands of jobs are being lost in the technology industry as firms see slowing sales amid growing fears of an economic downturn.
The posts seen by JEE News include those from employees of Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistant business, the Luna cloud gaming platform division and Lab126, which is behind the Kindle e-reader.
One employee, who said she works as a software development engineer in the U.S., posted that she was looking for a new job: “Due to the nature of my visa, I’m looking for new work opportunities. There is limited time to do it.”
Another Amazon worker who said he was affected by the layoffs said: “Of course I’m sad, but I’m optimistic about the future because I know what it means for me and the rest of my team. It’s a nice change.”
The company had already introduced a hiring freeze and halted some of its warehouse expansions, warning that it had overhired during the pandemic.
It also took steps to shut down parts of its business, canceling projects such as personal delivery robots.
Last month, Amazon founder and chairman Jeff Bezos warned that the U.S. economy was showing signs of “slowing down.”
Amazon’s share price has fallen more than 40 percent this year as it struggles with slowing online sales.
Other major technology companies have already announced major layoffs as they cut costs.
Last week Meta – which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – announced it would cut 13 percent of its workforce.
11,000 employees will lose their jobs as a result of the first major layoffs in the firm’s history.
Shortly after Elon Musk took over Twitter, it was confirmed that he would be cutting the social media platform’s headcount by around 50%.
In recent weeks, technology giant Microsoft, payment processing platform Stripe and cloud-based business software firm Salesforce have also announced layoffs.
‘Amazon is Very, Very Bloated’
A Seattle-based technology industry insider, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told JEE News that the job market had changed significantly in recent weeks.
“The last couple of years have been great for job opportunities due to remote work meaning you don’t have to isolate your job search to your local area. So the struggle for talent has been seen to be very intense. It’s competitive and wages have gotten really high.”
“What we’re seeing now is a reduction in budgets and staffing.”
Some technology firms, including Amazon, are likely to be hit particularly hard, he said.
“Amazon is very, very bloated. So there’s a lot of people out there but they’re not providing a lot of value so they’re first on the chopping block.”
