On Wednesday, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) did another round of layoffs. The latest 16,000 reductions leaked out via an accidentally sent internal email, bringing the total cut to around 30,000 since October, or 10% of the corporate workforce.
Just a decade ago, layoffs of this scale would have triggered apologies and existential questions about leadership. Yet, today they arrive in a calmer, forward-looking language. The management frames it as removing bureaucracy and being cost-conscious.
The firm isn't signaling distress but control. The market likes it – the stock is around 7% up year-to-date. And that distinction says a lot about how the meaning of layoffs has quietly changed.
Boom And Bust Cycles
This change in perception didn't arrive overnight. It started years ago, best remembered in the pandemic boom. Between 2020 and 2021, tech companies hired as if demand would only go one direction – up and to the right.
Amazon expanded aggressively across corporate roles, logistics, and cloud, responding to a world stuck at home and buying everything online. Cheap capital made it easy to justify excess headcount as "future optionality."
Eventually, the cycle turned. Demand normalized, and interest rates climbed. Investors stopped rewarding the promise of growth and started questioning inefficiency. What once appeared like foresight suddenly looked like bloat.
Amazon's cuts mirror what's happened across tech, where hundreds of thousands of roles have disappeared since 2022, according to layoffs.fyi.
Despite the common belief that Europe stands insulated by stronger labor laws, the same logic has arrived there too—just dressed differently. "Strategic refocuses," rolling reorganizations, and role eliminations allow companies to shed staff while technically staying compliant. The safety net hasn't vanished, but it's been stretched thin enough to see through.
It's Not You, It's The Business Strategy
The most important shift isn't the number of layoffs—it's how they're interpreted.
For most of modern corporate history, layoffs were an admission of failure. Something went wrong. Leadership misread the market. Demand collapsed. Today, layoffs increasingly function as proof of discipline. They reassure investors that executives are willing to make hard, unpopular decisions to protect margins and reallocate capital.
Amazon's message fits the bill. These cuts aren't framed as reactive panic, but as proactive streamlining. Flatten the org. Increase ownership. Invest in "the future," which increasingly means AI.
In that framing, individual performance matters less. Entire teams can be cut not because they failed, but because they no longer fit the story the company is telling the market.
For employees, this changes the psychology. Being laid off stopped automatically carrying the stigma. It became less of a "not good enough" and more of a "the firm is doing something else." It doesn't make the impact smaller, but it does explain eroding trust when layoffs land alongside strong revenues and big corporate plans.
The "Job Hopping" Premium
This detachment shows why loyalty eroded long before the layoffs arrived. Median job tenure peaked in 2012 at 4.7 years for men and 4.6 years for women. Since then, it only kept shrinking, hitting a multi-decade low at 3.9 in 2024.
During the boom years, switching jobs was the fastest way to grow pay and scope. Staying put often meant falling behind.
Remote work only accelerated the trend. When geography stopped being a constraint, for some roles (particularly tech) so did exclusivity. "Stealth jobs," where employees quietly worked multiple roles, weren't about greed as much as risk management. If companies treat labor like adjustable inventory, workers respond by harvesting the upside of the "good times."
Tighter control and return-to-office mandates have since tried to reclaim leverage after a period when employees had it, but the lesson remains.
Workers have learned that job security isn't tied to loyalty or performance alone—it's tied to strategic relevance. So, they plan accordingly, treating careers less like ladders and more like markets that can turn on a dime.
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