Amazon, Goldman Sachs employees flood social media with layoff news

Social media and professional community networks have been buzzing with news about Amazon India layoffs. The company earlier this month acknowledged that it was laying off 18,000 workers globally. India will see this impacting about 1,000, or 1 per cent of its workbase.

Professional networking platforms, such as LinkedIn and Grapevine, were full of stories of layoffs.

One of the posts on Grapevine, a community application (app) for professionals in India, said: “You can hear people breaking down and crying in office.”

Another post shared on Twitter by Corporate Chat India – an app for ‘real’ workplace conversations – tweeted, “Seventy-five per cent of my team is gone. I’m still employed, but do not feel like working anymore.”

LinkedIn, another popular professional networking platform, was inundated with employee résumés. Amazon’s job cuts — about 80 per cent higher than earlier estimates — are a part of its annual operating planning review process.

Take the case of Harsh, a BTech from IIT Mandi and a software design engineer at Amazon. “Never wanted to start my 2023 on this. But as part of Amazon layoffs, my job role got terminated recently. I graduated from IIT Mandi as a BTech CSE major. Although my stay at Amazon was short, I am grateful for the opportunity. I got to learn new skills and grow as a software engineer,” he wrote in a post, while sharing his résumé with potential hirers.

Amazon layoffs have not only impacted junior-level engineers and recent hires, but experienced employees as well.

Harshavardhan Chittora, a senior software engineer, said in a LinkedIn post, “This is to inform you all that 85 per cent of my team got impacted due to recent layoffs at Amazon and unfortunately I’m also the one who got impacted. I have a total of five-plus years of experience (three in Amazon) and have worked in different domains. I’m actively looking for other opportunities.”

Meanwhile, the labour commissioner’s office in Pune has sent a notice to Amazon regarding the implementation of an illegal voluntary separation policy and layoffs. The Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate had filed a complaint against Amazon management. The labour office has asked Amazon to be present on January 17 at its office.

Amazon Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy in an internal note said, “This year’s review has been more difficult, given the uncertain economy and us having hired rapidly over the past several years. In November, we communicated the hard decision to eliminate several positions across our devices and books businesses, and also announced a voluntary reduction offer for some employees in our people experience and technology solutions organisation.”

There were many more such stories on LinkedIn from employees of Goldman Sachs, which also started to hand out pink slips in India.

“Scary stuff at Goldman Sachs India. Employees are being asked to go to a conference room, told that they’re laid off, and asked to leave immediately without being allowed to go back to their desks. Started a while ago with a 10-people layoff. But now hundreds are expected to be cut,” read a January 12 tweet from Corporate Chat India. News reports have pegged layoffs at Goldman Sachs India at 500.