The stability promise of the tech industry is being shredded. Amazon, the global e-commerce leader, is set to carry out its most ruthless job cut ever, with the elimination of 30,000 corporate positions beginning on October 28, 2025. That's close to 10% of its corporate staff and the biggest individual layoff in Amazon's 30-year history.
The news has caused shockwaves in the technology industry, most notably among workers who felt that getting a job at Amazon guaranteed their job security. For thousands of employees in Human Resources, Operations, Devices and Services, and even the vaunted AWS unit, that security disappeared overnight.
The COVID-19 Hiring Spree That Backfired
In order to appreciate today's massacre, we must flash back to 2020. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit and lockdowns confined people to their homes, Amazon recognized unprecedented opportunity. Online purchases went through the roof as consumers were unable to shop in brick-and-mortar stores, and the company launched the most ferocious hiring binge in corporate history.
Between January and October 2020 alone, Amazon added 4,27,300 employees, essentially hiring 1,400 new workers every single day. The company offered premium wages, unlimited overtime, and quickly converted 1,75,000 temporary positions into permanent roles. Their workforce ballooned by over 50% in less than a year, reaching 1.55 million globally.
Amazon's leadership made a critical miscalculation: they assumed pandemic-level demand represented the new normal. It didn't.
The Brutal Course Correction
As life normalized and customers went back to physical locations, Amazon was immersed in surfeit labor expenses. The thousands of staff members brought on during the mania were no longer assets, they were high-cost liabilities.
The first adjustment arrived in late 2022 and early 2023, when Amazon let go of more than 27,000 staff members. But even that stunning cut wasn't sufficient to meet CEO Andy Jassy's efficiency goals.
Now, internal reports show the firm is to slash as much as 15% of its human resources department alone, in addition to making sweeping cuts across several departments. The People Experience and Technology unit, ironically, the same unit that masterminded the hiring binge, will have some of the deepest cuts.
AI: The Real Reason Behind the Layoffs
Though Amazon openly presents these reductions as cost savings, there is a sadder reality. CEO Andy Jassy has already been candid about his AI-first approach, saying that artificial intelligence will necessarily translate to fewer jobs.
Internal leaked plans reveal Amazon plans to automate 75% of business by 2033, which could delete more than 600,000 US jobs. The company estimates this automation amounts to saving around 30 cents per delivered item, equating to an eye-watering $12.6 billion in saved costs between 2025 and 2027.
The End of Tech Industry Job Security
Amazon is not the only one. Meta recently eliminated 600 roles from its AI unit during restructuring, which indicates that even the most dominant tech firms consider human employees expendable.
For those 30,000 Amazon workers who have been sent termination letters, the message is starkly apparent: in the age of automation and artificial intelligence, even getting hired by a tech giant guarantees nothing.
The institutions where individuals used to think their lives were secured have shown that employment security in the new economy is just an illusion. The high-tech job market had promised job stability and opportunity. It provided the biggest corporation job layoff in history.
