Amazon’s Biggest Layoffs Ever

Amazon's Record Cuts and what It Means for Jobs According to cnbc, Amazon will announce the largest corporate layoffs in its history starting Tuesday, with plans reported as high as 30,000 position. The cuts would span much of the company and follow earlier reductions since 2022 that already eliminated more than 27,000 jobs. Amazon hasn't commented yet, but reports indicating the move is part of CEO Andy Jassy's efforts to streamline layers of management and shift work toward artificial intelligence. In a June memo, Jassy told employees the company will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today and more people doing other types of jobs. Well, we'll see about the more people bit. The broader picture. Big tech has been cutting tens of thousands of roles across Microsoft, Meta, Google, Salesforce and Intel as they invest heavily in AI and efficiency. That's why the next wave of job growth is likely to come from small business and entrepreneurs where new products, services and local hirings aren't constrained by legacy headcount targets or Wall street expectations. Okay, so what's the real message here? If you think you can have a cushy sure fire coast to upper middle class wealth in America by majoring in computer science and then getting a job with a big tech company, guess what? You're wrong. That path is being shut down. The big tech companies are firing people. Here's my recommendation to anyone majoring in computer science. You need to also get a minor in entrepreneurialism. You need to know how to sell your services whether it's hour by hour, week by week, or month by month because you might not ever get a full time job. Let's dig a little bit deeper here. Let me go behind the scenes a moment and sort of tell you how some news shows are put to, you know, put to bed for final format and biases in the media. I just displayed a certain bias for you right now, but I'm going to be transparent with you. I used the headline grabber that Amazon is going to cut 30,000 jobs. Now I read about five stories yesterday that and today, this morning and they all had different numbers. One had 14,000, one had 15,000. One did have 30. I picked the larger number. Why is that? It's not because of left wing bias, right wing bias, corporate bias. It's a bias that anyone in the news or entertainment business has and that is a bias towards the more interesting story. It's simply more interesting because it's more dramatic to talk about 30,000 people losing their jobs than it is 15,000. So I want to be transparent with you on that. Let's look at some more of the number. Amazon has already cut a bunch of people in recent years. They've cut 27,000 jobs since 2022. Microsoft has laid off 15,000 employees in May to July of 2025. Meta cut 600 jobs in their AI unit just earlier in the last week. Google has cut 100 design user experience jobs. Salesforce has reduced 4,000 thousand customer support roles. Well, that's hardly surprising. I mean, trying to get a hold of customer support for any big tech company is often a fool's errand. Intel has job cuts of 35,000 and over the last two years, 20,000 in just recent months. So add it all up in the tech industry. And we say, when we say tech industry, we're really talking about industry in America. Because when you look at the impact on not just the s and P500, not just American Stock Exchange, but the whole worldwide stock exchange, it's so heavily dominated by seven to 10 companies, tech companies for the most part. So they've eliminated more than a quarter of a million jobs since 2023. 98,000 in 2025. So what's the answer? I'll give you sort of the macro political answer if you want to change this. It's never been easier for companies to fire employees. Didn't used to be that case in the 50s, 60s and 70s, the era when some people say, let's go back to when America was great. The reason it was better for a lot of people, the reason there was a thriving middle class is because there were unions. And I don't mean just unions for government workers and teachers like today. I mean real unions for private sector jobs. And they made it much more difficult to fire people. If you want unions, you're going to have to vote that. You're going to have to vote for political parties that support unions. And that means sometimes disregarding a certain ad about oh my God, your daughter's going to have to go to a swim meet and compete against a transsexual means. You might have to ignore stuff that has absolutely no impact on your life and vote in ways that do affect your pocketbook. Because the entire workforce was much the private sector workforce heavily, heavily unionized in the 50s and the 60s and the 70s, and there's basically nothing left. So employers have all the power and they're not going to give it up and the party in power is not going to force them to. So that's the macro political level solution, societal solution. Now Let me talk about you and me because let's face it, we can't change politics necessarily overnight. We can't get rid of politicians we don't like and we can't force the CEOs of Amazon and Meta and Google Alphabet to just all of a sudden start hiring us or our kids or our grandkids. We can't do that. So what is the solution? A part of it is I think people are going to be much more ambitious and aggressive about going after jobs in small companies, taking risk in startups, going to work for that small scrappy company that could become maybe not the next Google because Google has laid down so much pipe, sort of prevent competition, but the next small company that could at least become a medium sized company. Maybe they don't have benefits now, maybe you don't have a nice office, maybe your friends and family aren't impressed, but you've got a job. So that's one part. Young people starting out their career can't simply say, you know, I'm going to work for Google or Meta or I'm going to stay at home and play video games with my parents. That attitude has got to go away. The next attitude is it is subtler, I think ultimately more important for more people, which is, I think you've got to get away from this idea of I deserve a job to I want to use my talents in a way where I make money to support my life and I help other people. A hugely different mindset. What do I mean by that? I mean not just 55 year olds who have retired and decided to be a consultant and take a few gigs here and there. I mean, you're 22 years old, you've just graduated from a state college in computer science and you can't get a job. You need to hang out your shingle right now and start selling your services as a computer software consultant. And maybe you work for a few nonprofits by the hour, maybe have some monthly projects with a local library. Maybe you're able to get part time work with a bigger company, a local utility, aggressively go out and market your service. I promise you nothing bad can happen from it. This idea that I paid my dues and I graduated from college and I have a degree that everyone said is going to give me a job. So now I get to type send resume, send resume, send resume. Oh, wait for the phone to call and someone to hire me and say show up. Here's your first month salary. I'm sorry, it's not a right and it's not really going to happen nearly as often in the future. So that's why I'm on your side, trying to help you. You could be a mid level career professional and You've worked for 20 years at Facebook or Google. Your job's gone. It's not going to be as simple as just getting another job the way it was perhaps 10 years ago or 15 years ago. Look, we live in a world that is increasingly dog eat dog. We live in a world where our political culture is about being tough on people. No compassion. I don't think that's a good sign. But that is the culture we live in and I want to help prepare you. So my number one piece of advice to anyone in college, or for that matter anyone looking for a job or has a job and might need to look for a job is this. Start thinking of yourself as the CEO of a corporation and that's you. It's a manpower company or a woman power company, however you want to think of it. And you're the CEO of that company and it's your job to figure out how to monetize your company's assets, which means your time, your expertise, your value. And maybe a part of it is job hunting, sending out resumes six hours a day, but the others six hours a day. When you're not sleeping, eating and exercising the other six hours of the day you need to be out hustling looking for work contracts, consulting fees, fee for service. There's a lot of different ways of talking about it. And yes, I'm well aware that the gig economy isn't great for most people. I'm well aware of that. You know what else isn't great for most people? Being unemployed and having zero income, especially when the government is shut down. So I'm not telling you this is a perfect solution or a pre answer, but it is going to be the best for you if you have that mentality. Now I've lived this. I was someone who frankly didn't really fit into big corporate cultures or big government. So I sort of hung out my shingle in the last century. And I won't kid you, it was rough going when I really, really got serious about running my own business and thinking of myself as an entrepreneur, someone with a small business. I only made $10,000 the first year and that was working 18 hours a day. But you know what? It then went up another comma, another zero and a times two. The next year did pay off. I got over that hump and I've done pretty well ever since. I'm not Elon Musk, but I've done pretty well ever since. Now, did I have certain advantages that a lot of people don't have? Absolutely. But I'm trying to give you every advantage I can. And right now, big corporations have all the advantages. They've got the power and they have the incentive to not hire you. They're spending collectively trillions of dollars on artificial intelligence. Why are they doing that? They're doing it to reduce cost. How do you reduce cost? You fire people. Is that nice or sweet or warm and cuddly or moral or ethical? I'll let other people weigh in on that. But I'm here to tell you it is reality. It is why they're investing in artificial intelligence. And it's why you have to be extraordinarily proactive. It's why the mentality of oh, I'm a nerd. I'm going to sit here in my computer lab and just learn stuff and not talk to anyone and have headphones all the time is going to be a surefire way to unemployment and irrelevance. Whereas 20 years ago, 15 years, even five years ago, that was a surefire way to a high paying job. Especially if you had a computer science degree from a respectable school. It's not going to work anymore. So I beg you, I urge you, stop turning down your nose at gig work. There's a difference between gig work where you're making $600 a month versus gig work where you're making $6,000 a month or $60,000 a month. Not saying it's easy. Oh, but TJ, what about benefits? I need benefits. Benefits are just a function of money. If you are productive enough and charge enough in your own gig work, you now have a real business. You can give yourself any benefits you want. And of course the number one benefit is not being beholden to any one company who can fire you anytime they want.