The job cuts would mark the second largest round of layoffs in the company’s history, adding to the 18,000 employees the company said it would lay off in January.

In the memo, Jassy said the second phase of the company’s annual planning process completed this month and led to the additional job cuts. He said Amazon will still hire in some strategic areas.

“Some may ask why we didn’t announce these role reductions with the ones we announced a couple months ago. The short answer is that not all of the teams were done with their analyses in the late fall; and rather than rush through these assessments without the appropriate diligence, we chose to share these decisions as we’ve made them so people had the information as soon as possible,” Jassy said.