Amazon’s Big Trim Hits Retail Managers Hard — and Has AWS on Edge

With input from Business Insider, CNN, the Washington Post, and Bloomberg.

Amazon’s latest layoffs landed with surgical precision on its retail org, carving out thousands of early- to mid-level managers while stoking fresh anxiety inside AWS about what might come next.

The company said Tuesday it’s shedding 14,000 corporate jobs. Internal US-focused data viewed by Business Insider shows who took the brunt: more than 78% of the eliminated roles were managers at levels L5 to L7, the band where Amazon’s management track really begins and scales up. Over 80% of those cut sat in the retail empire — e-commerce, HR, logistics — underscoring a push to flatten layers, quicken decision-making, and squeeze more profit from Amazon’s most mature business.

The breakdown covers roughly 7,500 people who got notices in the US on Tuesday, with another 6,500 or so cuts sprinkled across Europe, India, and other regions, according to a person involved in the process. The message from Seattle is familiar: become leaner to “innovate much faster.” CEO Andy Jassy has already shaved the manager-to-employee ratio by about 15% this year, a culture reset that favors speed over sprawling org charts.

Inside AWS, the mood is uneasy even though Tuesday’s axe barely grazed the cloud unit — less than 1% of the cuts hit there, compared with about 5% in advertising. Several employees told BI they’re bracing for a heavier round aimed at AWS early next year. Some teams, they say, were told to plan for headcount reductions of about 5% in 2025 and 10% in 2026. None of those plans are public, and the company didn’t comment, but even rumor can rattle an organization that’s been Amazon’s growth engine for a decade.

Beth Galetti, Amazon’s HR chief, framed the reductions as part of running the company “like the world’s largest startup.” The logic: the rise of AI is reshaping work, so Amazon needs fewer layers and more ownership to keep pace. The company insists AI isn’t the direct cause of most of these 14,000 cuts — the technology’s productivity promise is still more aspiration than daily reality — but it’s undeniably the north star for where investments are headed. Retail has been on a tighter leash for months anyway, with a hiring freeze across much of the division, green lights mostly for backfills, and a louder drumbeat on efficiency to fund faster delivery, expanded selection, and a heavier bet on robotics, automation, and AI.

The timing is notable. Amazon is printing big profits — more than $35 billion in the first half of 2025 — while reportedly preparing to spend north of $120 billion on AI this year. That duality mirrors Corporate America’s broader moment: big, profitable companies trimming headcount and touting AI-fueled productivity gains that haven’t fully materialized. It pleases Wall Street, but it’s a gamble, too, on technologies that still stumble and on a business climate that’s anything but settled.

For the people leaving, the company says there’s a 90-day internal search window and priority in hiring pipelines, standard fare in Big Tech restructurings. For the people staying, the mandate is clear: fewer managers, faster cycles, more output. And for the folks in AWS watching the retail shake-up from across the lake, the question lingers in every hallway chat and Slack thread: if today was mostly retail, when does the cloud feel the weather?