Re: Amazon Laying Off Hundreds In Prime Video Studios In Latest Cuts

0 views

Skip to first unread message

Message has been deleted

Gerarda Zmuda

unread,

Jul 8, 2024, 10:08:35 PM7/8/24

to mataphade

Amazon announced this week it was laying off hundreds of workers at Twitch, Prime Video and Amazon Studios.CEO Dan Clancy informed employees about the job cuts early Wednesday morning. More than 500 workers at Twitch will be effected, Clancy said in a memo. That number represents about 35% of the staff.

amazon laying off hundreds in prime video studios in latest cuts

Descargar archivo https://tinourl.com/2yPCfe

Amazon, Google, and X have initiated a new round of layoffs as they enter 2024. Amazon has cut hundreds of jobs in its film and television studios division in addition to its streaming platform, Twitch. Google has also started to lay off hundreds of people from its voice-activated Google Assistant project and other employees in select product teams. Furthermore, X has cut staff from its global trust and safety team, and dealt a major blow to its team of safety engineers.

The cuts come as most Big Tech companies continue their cost-cutting efforts, streamline operations, and prioritize key projects. It follows the initial mass layoffs that resulted in several thousand job cuts in 2022 and 2023, including other major companies such as Apple, Microsoft, and many others.

Google also laid off hundreds of its workers in a number of divisions, driven by its growing focus on its artificial intelligence projects. The tech giant primarily cut roles in its core engineering division, the hardware division, and those working on the voice-activated Google Assistant. Under the leadership of Sundar Pichai, the company cut approximately 12000 jobs in 2023, and there has been a significant drive towards cost reduction.

Twitch, the livestreaming platform owned by Amazon, said on Wednesday that it was laying off hundreds of workers, the latest in a number of companies announcing cuts in their workforce this week. But experts tell Newsweek that the job losses do not signal that mass layoffs are set to hit the U.S. economy in the immediate future.

This week, Amazon, investment firm BlackRock and language-learning business Duolingo instituted cutbacks. Twitch laid off 500 workers in what CEO Dan Clancy said was an effort to make the business more sustainable.

"We still have work to do to rightsize our company and I regret having to share that we are taking the painful step to reduce our headcount by just over 500 people across Twitch," he said in a post on the company's website.

In a note sent to employees on Wednesday that Amazon shared with Newsweek, Senior Vice President Mike Hopkins said that the company "will be eliminating several hundred roles across the Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios organization."

"We are not able to share specific numbers. In some cases, this was because the contractor's project concluded, and in some cases, this was because the contractor's work was no longer needed due to changes in how we generate and share content between our 100+ language courses," the spokesperson added.

"There will always be some background level of layoffs. The data we have are unequivocal that layoffs remain low and have fallen over the past six months or so," Michael Pearce, a lead economist at Oxford Economics, told Newsweek.

He pointed out that data such as jobless claims showed that layoffs were low. Applications for unemployment benefits fell by 18,000 in the week ending December 30, the lowest level since October, indicating a labor market that is seeing few layoffs, according to an analysis by Oxford Economics.

"Layoffs are like extremely low or for most of 2023, have been extremely low by historical standards," said Berger, pointing to recent job opening data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that showed that there was little firing happening as employers looked to keep their workers.

"I am pretty skeptical this is telling us that we are in the midst of a surge in layoffs, I think it's more that we're very attuned to isolated stories of layoffs that are tragedies for people experiencing them but are on a small scale."

Evidence elsewhere also suggested that companies are still recruiting workers. Hiring across the country jumped by 5.5 percent in December from the previous month, according to data from the professional networking platform LinkedIn, the largest month-over-month increase over the past year.

"My feeling is that we're going to discover in the coming year that probably, we continue to have these anecdotes about layoffs here and there," he said. "But the overall economy just keeps very gradually and moderately continuing in an expansionary mode and employment keeps very gradually going on."

Omar Mohammed is a Newsweek reporter based in the Greater Boston area. His focus is reporting on the Economy and Finance. He joined Newsweek in 2023 and brings with him a decade of experience covering business and economics for the likes of Reuters, Bloomberg and Quartz. He also covered the Tokyo Summer Olympics in Japan for Reuters and his Guardian piece about the NBA's expansion into Africa was longlisted for The International Sports Press Association Media Awards in 2023. He has a Master's degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where he was a Knight-Bagehot fellow in 2022. You can get in touch with Omar by emailing o.moh...@newsweek.com