- AWS is freezing hiring and staffing in certain departments, an employee told Insider.
- Amazon has already cut teams in other parts of the company to keep costs down.
- Executives have previously suggested AWS could escape austerity.
Seven current employees told Insider that Amazon Web Services is cutting hiring across multiple departments. It’s a sudden turnaround last week after executives hinted that Amazon’s profitable cloud division could be spared cutbacks that would hit the rest of the company.
The sales and marketing department plans to freeze hiring until the end of the first quarter of next year, according to one current employee, and the move was announced to some managers on Wednesday. All open positions will be closed and only key roles will be filled, the person said.
Some employees in the sales and marketing department said they were not aware of the hiring freeze, but said they had already met their hiring targets for this year.
Meanwhile, at least two AWS engineering organizations plan to freeze personnel through the end of 2023, according to two current employees. The number of people leaving may change, but the goal is to keep total headcount constant, according to two current employees.
Internally, Amazon has been adamant that the staffing change does not constitute a “freeze.” That’s because certain roles continue to be filled with executive approval, said another current employee. All who spoke with the insider requested anonymity because they were discussing confidential matters.
Amazon spokesman Brad Glasser told Insider that new job creation in many departments has been delayed for “a few months” due to “an uncertain economy and how many people we have hired over the past few years.” ” He admitted that he had stopped.
“We plan to hire a significant number of people in 2023 and continue to be excited about the significant investment in our larger business and new initiatives such as Prime Video, Alexa, Grocery, Kuiper, Zoox and Healthcare,” Glasser said. I will,” he added.
Overall, Amazon is trying to cut costs amid slowing growth and looming recession fears. The company cut a number of other pie-in-the-sky ventures, including a robotics team, a healthcare division, and a pandemic-launched virtual travel experience division.
But on the company’s earnings call last week, management hinted that advertising and AWS, the drivers of the company’s earnings, could get special treatment.
“We will continue to secure strong funding for businesses such as AWS and advertising, which are still in the early stages of growth, to support our customers,” Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky told reporters. We need to grow our business,” he said on a conference call after Amazon’s earnings release.
AWS reported its weakest revenue growth on record last quarter, Olsavsky said, as companies cut back on spending as cloud customers braced for possible economic disruptions.
Amazon announced a hiring freeze in its advertising business on Tuesday, Bloomberg reported. The New York Post reported on the AWS hiring freeze last week.
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