Amazon.com will lay off several hundred employees in its streaming and studio operations, it said in an internal note last week as companies extend their massive job cuts over the past two years into 2024. Employees facing exit are from Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios.
As per a Reuters report, the online retail behemoth had last year cut more than 27,000 jobs as part of a wave of US tech layoffs after the industry hired heavily during the pandemic.
“We’ve identified opportunities to reduce or discontinue investments in certain areas while increasing our investment and focus on content and product initiatives that deliver the most impact,” Mike Hopkins, Senior Vice President of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, told employees in a note seen by Reuters.
The company has spent aggressively in recent years to bolster its media business, including the $8.5 billion deal for MGM and around $465 million on the first season of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” on Prime Video in 2022.
It is also set to roll out ads on Prime Video as well as a more expensive ad-free subscription tier in some markets, similar to moves by rivals Netflix and Walt Disney.
After widespread job cuts in 2022 and 2023, many companies are now targeting select projects and divisions as they re-priorities their resources. Amazon recently cut some jobs at its Alexa voice assistant division, while Microsoft removed some staff at its LinkedIn professional network.
