Amazon on Wednesday slashed layers of middle management in some of its customer service divisions as part of an organizational restructuring, Fortune has learned.
The cuts affected more than 100 customer service managers working in Level 5 and Level 6 middle management positions both in call centers and virtually. Impacted employees worked mainly in either the U.S. or India. Some of the managers first realized something was up when their computer systems suddenly shut down during their workday, according to one source.
“We have had more and more work added, 12-16 hour days, maximum stress to be cut free without a thought or a warning,” one of those impacted by the cuts told Fortune.
An Amazon spokesperson said that the restructuring was intended in part to shrink the distance between customers and customer service leaders. The layoffs impacted less than 1 percent of the global Amazon customer service workforce, the company said, but it was unclear what percentage of the customer service division’s management team was impacted.
“As part of a shift in how our Worldwide Customer Service organization is structured, we’ve identified a relatively small number of roles that are no longer required,” Amazon spokesperson Montana MacLachlan said in a statement. “We did not make these decisions lightly, and we are committed to supporting employees whose roles are affected during their transition.”
The affected US employees will receive pay and benefits for 60 days plus severance, the company said.
The layoffs come two weeks after Amazon posted strong first-quarter financial results with more than $143 billion in revenue and $10 billion in profit. Amazon under CEO Andy Jassy has finally hit an inflection point where it can both invest heavily in long-term bets like generative AI while at the same time pumping out needle-moving profits. The company has reached this point, in part, due to Jassy’s willingness to oversee the largest corporate layoffs in Amazon’s history in recent years and demand that his leaders continually squeeze out excess costs wherever possible. Amazon divisions such as AWS, Prime Video, and Twitch have all cut hundreds of employees this year.
Amazon has also worked this year to shift major logistics costs from its own books to those of third-party merchants in the form of new, controversial seller fees.
“[W]e don’t believe that we’re at the end of what we can do in terms of improving our cost structure on the store side,” Jassy told Wall Street analysts during its earnings call last month.
News of the customer service layoffs first surfaced in a LinkedIn post written by a former Amazon general manager named Tony Carr.
Are you an Amazon manager impacted by these layoffs or an Amazon employee with thoughts on this topic or a tip to share? Contact Jason Del Rey at jason.delrey@fortune.com, jasondelrey@protonmail.com, or through secure messaging app Signal at 917-655-4267. You can also message him on LinkedIn or at @delrey on X.
