Accidental Email Exposes Amazon’s 16,000 Job Layoffs
Amazon confirms 16,000 job cuts after an accidental email leak, revealing layoffs across teams as part of a major workforce restructuring plan.
American tech giant Amazon has confirmed it will cut 16,000 jobs – an announcement it made hours after an email was mistakenly sent to employees detailing a new round of global layoffs.
Which was sent late Tuesday and mentioned job cuts for several employees in the US, Canada and Costa Rica as part of an effort to "strengthen the company."
The message was apparently shared in error, as it was quickly recalled.
On Wednesday morning, Amazon announced the job cuts as part of a plan to "reduce bureaucracy" within the company.
Beth Galetti, Amazon's Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology, said on Wednesday that she does not plan to make "large-scale cuts every few months," a reference to Amazon's announcement in October of 14,000 job cuts.
"While many teams finalized their organizational changes in October, other teams had not yet completed that work," she said.
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Project Dawn
On Tuesday, a draft email written by Colleen Aubrey, a Senior Vice President at Amazon Web Services (AWS), was included in a calendar invitation sent to several Amazon employees by an executive assistant.
The invitation was titled "Send Project Dawn Email," apparently indicating Amazon's code name for the job cuts.
Although the email made it clear that layoffs were happening at Amazon, employees had not yet been officially notified.
The email stated, "This is a continuation of the work we've been doing for over a year to strengthen the company, including reducing layers, increasing ownership, and eliminating bureaucracy so we can move faster for customers." The statement continued, "Changes like this are difficult for everyone. These decisions are tough and made thoughtfully as we position our organization and AWS for future success."
According to a former employee who spoke on condition of anonymity, Amazon employees had been anticipating the cuts of 16,000 jobs for weeks.
The former employee, who left the company as part of the cuts in October, said the common understanding among employees was that management intended to cut approximately 30,000 positions in total.
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The company was expected to reach that number of job cuts with another large round of layoffs this month, followed by further cuts by the end of May. While laid-off employees were encouraged to reapply for open positions at Amazon, the number of such positions was limited. Those who did not find another role were given severance pay based on their length of service with the company.
Since 2022, major tech companies like Amazon, Meta, Google, Microsoft, and others have been reducing their workforces, laying off thousands of people each year.
According to Layoffs.fyi, which tracks job cuts, an estimated 700,000 people have been laid off across the tech industry in the past four years.
So far this year, Facebook owner Meta has cut several positions, affecting several hundred employees. Pinterest has also done the same, eliminating approximately 700 jobs this week.
'Time to rethink'
Since Amazon founder Jeff Bezos stepped down as chief executive four years ago, his successor, Andy Jassy, has led the company through multiple rounds of layoffs in 2023, 2024, and 2025.
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Jassy has also attempted to instill a stricter work culture at the firm. Working five days a week in the office is now mandatory, making Amazon one of the few major tech companies requiring its employees to be in the office full-time.
According to a Business Insider report, Amazon is also focusing on cost-cutting, even monitoring the use of corporate mobile phones by AWS employees to limit the long-standing $50 per month reimbursement.
In an email sent to employees before the Thanksgiving holiday,CEO Andy Jassy said he was grateful for the "challenges and opportunities at work" because "the world is changing so rapidly."
Jassy called this period at Amazon "a time to rethink everything we do."
On Tuesday, the company announced it would be closing nearly 70 of its remaining Amazon-branded grocery stores, Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go, and expanding its Whole Foods Market business.
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