On Tuesday morning, some Amazon employees learned they had lost their jobs — through text messages.
Amazon sent two text messages early Tuesday to inform employees their jobs had been eliminated, according to people familiar with the matter and screenshots reviewed by Business Insider.
One message urged affected employees to check their personal or work email before coming to the office. A second text directed them to call a help desk if they hadn’t received “an email message about your role.”
The texts, sent shortly after email notifications, were intended to prevent laid-off employees from arriving at the office and discovering their badges no longer worked, one of the people said.
The predicament of laid-off workers unable to badge in has become increasingly common during recent mass layoffs at companies such as Google and Tesla.
An Amazon spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment. The people who spoke with Business Insider asked not to be identified because they’re not authorized to speak to the press.
Amazon eliminated about 14,000 jobs on Tuesday, saying the cuts were part of an effort to streamline operations and “innovate much faster.” Many of the affected employees in the US were retail managers, continuing a trend of reductions in that part of the company.
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A message from Amazon HR chief Beth Galetti, sent to affected employees and shared on the company’s internal Slack, said laid-off workers would continue to receive full pay and benefits for 90 days, along with a severance package.
In a separate blog post Tuesday, Galetti said the job cuts were driven by rapid advances in artificial intelligence, noting that Amazon was making changes despite the company’s strong performance.
“What we need to remember is that the world is changing quickly,” Galetti wrote. “This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and altogether new ones).”
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