Amazon layoff wave continues! As the cloud computing department faces growth bottlenecks, it will lay off hundreds of people

Amazon confirmed on Wednesday that its cloud computing division AWS is laying off hundreds of positions in its physical store technology, sales, and marketing departments. "We have identified a few areas within the organization that need to be streamlined in order to continue to focus on key strategic areas that we believe will have the most impact," an AWS spokesperson said in a statement. "We made these decisions thoughtfully, and the company will support affected employees as they transition to new roles internally or externally at Amazon." US employees will continue to receive their salaries and benefits for at least 60 days and will be eligible for a severance package. Data shows that AWS, as a profitable department of Amazon and the largest provider of computing power and data storage leasing services in the industry, saw its sales growth rate drop to a historic low last year, mainly due to enterprises cutting back on cloud spending as interest rates rose. Amazon executives were optimistic about this in February, saying the market was beginning to show signs of re-acceleration. Prior to the layoffs, the company confirmed this week that it will remove the "Just Walk Out" cashierless shopping system from its Amazon Fresh grocery stores in the US, replacing it with an automated shopping cart. The store technology team was separated from Amazon's retail group in 2022 and integrated into its cloud computing division. An AWS spokesperson stated that the decision to lay off the store technology department was "due to a broader shift that has occurred with the use of applications related to Amazon stores and certain third-party stores." Amazon's wave of layoffs over the past year and a half began at the end of 2022 and has continued into 2023, marking the largest layoff in the company's history, cutting over 27,000 positions across almost every area of the company. Just this year, Amazon has laid off employees in its Twitch, Audible, Buy with Prime, Prime Video, and MGM Studios departments. Amazon's stock price rose 0.88% to $182.28 on Wednesday. The company's stock price has risen over 21% year-to-date.