In surprise move, AWS opens second quarter by cutting hundreds of jobs

Amazon Web Services is cutting staff.

The cloud computing behemoth made the announcement to employees April 3. AWS SVP Matt Garman said the company does not “take these decisions lightly” but that “we operate in an incredibly fast-moving industry, and it is important that we stay agile as an organization.”

Here’s the deal. AWS will cut hundreds of jobs around the world, primarily in the company’s sales, marketing, and global services organization and physical stores technology team. Cuts in the former division will focus on operations and education, company spokesperson Duncan Neasham told IT Brew in an email, while the latter is cutting jobs to focus on app and third party sales.

“We’ve identified a few targeted areas of the organization we need to streamline in order to continue focusing our efforts on the key strategic areas that we believe will deliver maximum impact,” Neasham told us, adding that the company will attempt to place workers in “new roles in and outside of Amazon.” US employees will get at least 60 days of pay and benefits, Neasham said.

Trendy. Tech jobs tracker Layoffs.fyi showed that 237 companies cut 58,500 jobs in 2024 as of this writing. Cloud computing—like the tech industry in general—is entering a bit of a rough patch, with companies and organizations walking back their commitments to using offsite data storage.

As IT Brew reported in March, a Citrix survey of 350 US-based business and IT leaders found that 94% of respondents moved at least some data storage back onsite. Citrix VP of product management Calvin Hsu told IT Brew that part of the reason for the drop in cloud services is related to correcting pandemic policies.

“We’re hitting that point where people are looking at their renewal bills and their go-forward strategy after making some of the commitments that they [made] during the pandemic,” Hsu said.