It seems Jeff Bezos’s successor, Andy Jassy, has found a new hobby: trimming the corporate hedges until there is almost nothing left. Amazon just announced it is axing another 16,000 corporate jobs, marking its second massive clear out since October. If you are keeping score at home, that is 30,000 people shown the exit in just a few months. Apparently, the company decided that having too many managers is like having too many cooks in a kitchen that is being taken over by robots anyway.
The official line is that Amazon needs to “reduce bureaucracy” and “flatten the organisation.” Jassy seems to think middle managers spend too much time putting their fingerprints on everything and attending meetings about meetings. By getting rid of about 10% of its white collar workforce, the company hopes to move faster, though it is hard to move fast when you are busy carrying your desk plant to the car.
The AI Surcharge
While the company is playing down the idea that robots are stealing desks, the timing is a bit suspicious. Amazon plans to spend a staggering $125 billion this year on “capital expenditures.” Most of that mountain of cash is going toward data centres and the shiny new world of Artificial Intelligence.
| The Layoff Ledger | The Grim Totals |
| Latest Cut | 16,000 corporate roles. |
| Total Since Oct 2025 | 30,000 jobs (10% of white-collar staff). |
| AI Spending 2026 | $125 billion on infrastructure. |
| The “Great Flattening” | A push to remove middle management layers. |
A Growing Trend of “Flattening”
Amazon isn’t the only tech giant trying to look thin for the summer. Microsoft, Meta, and Intel all spent 2025 doing what they call “The Great Flattening.” This is corporate speak for “we hired too many people during the pandemic and now we would rather spend that money on Nvidia chips.” In 2025, US employers announced 1.2 million layoffs, the highest number since the world ground to a halt in 2020.
For the people still left at Amazon, life isn’t exactly a beach. On top of the layoffs, they are being called back to the office five days a week. It is a bold strategy: tell everyone they have to commute again, then fire a big chunk of the people they were supposed to be collaborating with.
The Future is Automated
Jassy previously warned that AI adoption would slowly start to reduce headcount, and it seems that “slowly” has just hit fast-forward. The company is closing its Fresh and Go stores and pivoting hard toward automation. For every manager who gets the boot, Amazon likely buys another few miles of server cable.
It is a tough time to be a human in a world that is increasingly obsessed with “intelligence engines.” If you are still at your desk, you might want to make sure your boss knows you are a person and not just a very expensive piece of software.
At least the office will have plenty of spare parking spaces now.
Related topics: Tech
