Amazon Faces Morale Strain as Jassy Reshapes Company After Record Layoffs

This article first appeared on GuruFocus.

Amazon (AMZN, Financials) is undergoing one of the biggest transformations in its history as CEO Andy Jassy reshapes the company to run leaner, faster, and more focused on artificial intelligence. But the cost of that shift is starting to show inside its workforce.

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Jassy has launched a broad overhaul of Amazon's corporate structure, including 14,000 layoffs announced last week and another round expected early next year. The move is part of his plan to make Amazon operate like the world's largest startup, cutting bureaucracy and speeding decision-making.

The latest cuts hit nearly every division from retail and logistics to AWS and human resources marking the largest corporate reduction in the company's 31-year history. Employees say morale has taken a hit, with some describing increased workloads and uncertainty about what comes next.

Even if things weren't going well inside the company, Amazon's stock went back up when it reported better-than-expected earnings and signed a new $38 billion AI deal with OpenAI. The corporation expects to invest $125 billion more on capital this year to build up its cloud infrastructure and speed up its AI projects.

Jassy says that the modifications are needed to keep Amazon competitive in a tech world that moves quickly. But for a lot of employees, it's a time of worry as the firm tries to find a balance between its startup mentality and the fact that it has to manage more than a million workers around the world.

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