Speaking during the company’s quarterly earnings call Thursday, CEO Andy Jassy said laying off those employees was about a mismatched cultural fit—and nothing else.
“The announcement that we made a few days ago was not really financially driven, and it’s not even really AI-driven, not right now at least,” he said about the job cuts. “It’s culture.”
“If you grow as fast as we did for several years, the size of businesses, the number of people, the number of locations, the types of businesses you’re in, you end up with a lot more people than what you had before, and you end up with a lot more layers,” he said.
This type of growth can lead to consequences, Jassy added.
“Sometimes without realizing it, you can weaken the ownership of the people that you have who are doing the actual work and who own most of the two-way-door decisions, the ones that should be made quickly and right at the front line,” he said.
A spokesperson for Amazon declined to comment.
During the quarterly earnings call, Jassy seemed to echo the sentiment, saying the “technological transformation” currently underway means companies need to be nimble and adaptable.
“It’s important to be lean, it’s important to be flat, and it’s important to move fast,” he said. “That’s what we’re going to do.”
