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Survivor’s guilt, overwork and AI: inside Amazon’s mass lay-offs

Drive for ‘leaner’ operations piles pressure on employees but could be a playbook for rivals

Amazon’s HR chief last month sought to damp concern among employees that mass lay-offs were now the norm. Cuts of more than 30,000 workers since October were not the “beginning of a new rhythm”, insisted Beth Galetti. “That’s not our plan.”

The world’s largest company by revenue has enacted rounds of job cuts since chief executive Andy Jassy took charge in 2021 after a period of rapid expansion in the pandemic. The company’s leadership says the latest cull serves a strategic aim: to make Amazon operate “like the world’s largest start-up”, ready to innovate using AI and by running “