Amazon lays off 250 employees via early morning emails, less than a month after 1,000 job cuts: Who was hit?
Amazon has laid off around 250 employees in its devices and services division, with workers informed of the decision through early morning emails and text messages on Wednesday.
Amazon job cuts come weeks after the company unveiled new Kindle e-readers and tablet computers.
Amazon confirmed the layoffs following an inquiry by Reuters, saying the decision was intended to improve efficiency and bring staffing in line with its product plans. Most of the affected employees worked in software development, according to a person familiar with the matter.
“We've made the difficult decision to eliminate a small number of roles,” an Amazon spokesperson said, without providing further details.
The latest job cuts were concentrated in Amazon's devices and services division, which develops products such as Kindle e-readers and Alexa-enabled devices. No more than 250 positions were eliminated.
Employees were informed early on Wednesday through text messages and emails, following the company's usual practice when announcing job cuts.
One message seen by Reuters came from Cherie Robinson, a human resources vice president in the devices and services division. Robinson told employees that the company had completed “a thorough review of our structure”, which had led to the decision to eliminate certain roles.
Amazon did not disclose a detailed breakdown of the affected teams or provide further information about the employees who lost their jobs.
Amazon said the latest layoffs were intended to help the business operate more efficiently and ensure its workforce reflects its product development plans.
The Amazon spokesperson said the cuts would help the company “operate more efficiently and better align with our product roadmap”.
The announcement comes after several product launches in the devices and services business, including new Kindle e-readers and tablet computers. On Wednesday, Amazon also introduced a new alarm clock and photo frame powered by Alexa, its voice assistant.
The latest layoffs come less than a month after Amazon cut around 1,000 jobs in its core retail division earlier in October.
The two rounds of job cuts affect different parts of the company, but both come as Amazon continues to review its staffing needs and operating structure.
The devices and services division is responsible for a range of consumer technology products, while the retail business remains central to Amazon's online shopping operations.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had earlier said that Amazon Web Services’ cloud computing capacity is largely sold out through 2027, with a significant portion of 2028 capacity already committed, as demand for AI infrastructure surges.
Speaking on a video podcast with Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz and general partner Erik Torenberg, Jassy said Amazon could invest more in infrastructure without wasting capital, noting that capacity for 2026 is already sold out.
“2027 is largely sold out. We always leave a certain amount for on demand and our inference service bedrock, or EC2, but largely sold out all the big chunks. A good chunk of 2028 is sold out,” he said.
Amazon had earlier projected capital expenditure of around $220 billion for 2026 and is scheduled to report its third-quarter results on October 29.
Amazon is scheduled to report its third-quarter financial results after the US stock market closes on Thursday.
The earnings announcement will offer investors an updated picture of the company's financial performance as it continues to invest in products and technology while making changes to its workforce.
(With agency inputs)
Sayantani Biswas is an assistant editor at Livemint with seven years of experience covering geopolitics, foreign policy, international relations and global power dynamics. She reports on Indian and international politics, including elections worldwide, and specialises in historically grounded analysis of contemporary conflicts and state decisions. She joined Mint in 2021, after covering politics at publications including The Telegraph. <br> She holds an MPhil in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University (2019), with a specialisation in postcolonial Latin American literature. Her research examined economic nationalism through Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America. She also writes on political language, cultural memory and the long shadows of conflict. <br> Biswas grew up in Durgapur, an industrial town in West Bengal shaped by migration, which drew families from across India to the Durgapur Steel Plant. As the only child in a joint family, she spent years listening—almost obsessively—to her grandparents’ testimonies of struggle, fear and loss as they fled Bangladesh during the Partition of 1947. This formative exposure to lived historical memory later converged with her training in Comparative Literature, equipping her to analyse socio-economic structures and their reverberations. <br> Outside the newsroom, she gravitates towards cultural history and critical theory, returning often to texts such as Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. As a journalist, she is committed to accuracy, intellectual rigour and fairness, and believes political reporting demands not only clarity and speed, but historical depth, contextual precision, and a disciplined resistance to spectacle.
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