Amazon is cutting 14,000 corporate jobs to become leaner and faster. CEO Andy Jassy says this move is about culture, not AI or cost-cutting, signalling a shift back to its startup roots.
Turns out, even Amazon needs a reset button. CEO Andy Jassy says the company’s latest wave of layoffs, around 14,000 corporate roles, isn’t about trimming costs or letting artificial intelligence take over, but about trimming the bloat. The goal? To make Amazon feel less like a corporate behemoth and more like the scrappy startup it once was. On Amazon’s quarterly earnings call, Jassy made it clear that the decision was driven by philosophy, not panic.
He said, “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. “Really, it’s culture.” That’s quite the clarification, considering this could become the largest workforce reduction in Amazon’s history, reports suggest the total number of layoffs may climb as high as 30,000.
But Jassy’s reasoning was simple: a giant company can’t afford to move slowly in an era that’s moving faster than ever.
“When that happens, sometimes without realising it, you can weaken the ownership of the people that you have who are doing the actual work,” he said, referencing Amazon’s famous “two-way door” philosophy, a Bezos-era concept encouraging employees to make reversible decisions quickly, without layers of approval.
Jassy argues that too many layers of management have crept in, slowing decisions and stifling initiative. The layoffs, he said, are designed to restore the nimbleness and “ownership” that defined Amazon’s scrappy early days. “We are committed to operating like the world’s largest startup,” he declared — a line that has become something of a personal mantra for the CEO.
A cultural reboot, not a cash grab
Jassy’s comments directly push back against the idea that the layoffs are a reaction to AI’s rise. Earlier this year, he did acknowledge that artificial intelligence will eventually make Amazon leaner, writing in a staff memo that the workforce could “shrink over time” thanks to AI-powered efficiencies.
So when news of the fresh layoffs broke this week, many assumed automation was already taking jobs. But Jassy was quick to dispel that. On Thursday’s call, he described the decision as part of a “cultural reset”, a move to strip away layers of middle management and rediscover Amazon’s entrepreneurial energy amid what he called “the technology transformation happening right now.”
