'Alexa: Lay Off Hundreds of Employees' (Insider Comms™ From Amazon)
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Big Tech layoffs continue with the latest announcement from Amazon’s Alexa division last week. Several hundred roles will be eliminated to “better align with our business priorities,” according to an internal memo (below 👇) from Daniel Rausch, VP of Alexa and Fire TV.
Almost exactly a year ago as many as 10,000 Amazon employees were on the wrong end of a layoff notice, including employees in the division that manufactures the Echo.
It didn’t go well back then. One employee vented on an internal Slack channel: “Why did I find out about the layoffs through a friend rather than internal news? Layoffs are one thing but the absolute disrespect is not how you become ‘The World’s Best Employer.’ Just asking for a little bit of humanity.”
Music and gaming divisions will also see cuts. Close to 30,000 Amazon employees have been laid off this year.
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The Alexa memo is about as bland as they come. I’m reminded of the recent memo from LinkedIn announcing layoffs ($), which I declared to be “349 words of not much.”
Rausch’s opening paragraph starts with a list of positive sentiments about the momentum behind the Alexa division and closes with the news that several hundred roles are being eliminated. (The culprit, by the way, is generative AI.)
After that it’s a straightforward piece of white bread: we’ll reach out to those impacted…this decision was not made lightly…for those of you left standing, we’re excited about the future.
I have yet to see a layoff memo that impresses me. Surely there are better, more thoughtful ways to deliver bad news. For example:
Separate good news from bad news. Don’t mash them together in the same paragraph.
Show empathy beyond This was a difficult decision. (Really?)
Provide details about why the changes are happening. Show numbers. Prove to employees this isn’t just cold, corporate, capitalist logic at play.
Explain the path forward to the employees who remain at the company. They’re wondering, when will the shoe drop for me?
A memo from Snap’s CEO Evan Spiegel explaining a slowdown in hiring and spending cuts can provide some inspiration. As I noted back in 2022 when I published the message:
Overall I think the memo is successful because a) it’s short and to the point, b) Spiegel uses statistics to back up the positive news, and c) the news isn’t that great, so he keeps his language measured.
At least Rausch’s email isn’t as bad as the one from Uber which, after announcing a spate of bad news, ends with a tone-deaf all caps closing cheer of “GO GET IT!” Oof.
Here’s Rausch’s memo to Alexa employees:
Subject: An Important Update for our Alexa Team
Team,
We’re really encouraged by the progress we’re making with Alexa: customers are interacting with Alexa tens of millions of times every hour and there are more than half a billion Alexa devices in customers’ homes. Our investments in generative AI are also bringing our vision for an even more intuitive, intelligent, and useful Alexa closer than ever before. As we continue to invent, we’re shifting some of our efforts to better align with our business priorities, and what we know matters most to customers—which includes maximizing our resources and efforts focused on generative AI. These shifts are leading us to discontinue some initiatives, which is resulting in several hundred roles being eliminated.
Today, we will reach out to colleagues in the U.S. and Canada who are impacted by these role reductions. Notification emails will be sent out shortly, and we expect all notifications in the U.S. and Canada to be completed this morning (Pacific time). We will communicate with impacted colleagues in India next week, and are following local processes in other regions, which may include time for consultation with employee representative bodies, and possibly resulting in longer timelines to communicate.
To those of you impacted by these reductions, please know we did not make this decision lightly. I want to sincerely thank you for all your hard work and dedication to the organization, and to our customers. We are committed to supporting you, and are providing packages that include a separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, external job placement support, and paid time to conduct your job search.
While this was a hard decision to make, we remain very optimistic about the future of Alexa. I want to reiterate that Alexa remains an incredibly important part of our business. I’m proud of the innovation we’ve driven, and continue to drive. Incorporating a new large language model into a voice-forward, personal AI, has been and continues to be an enormous scientific and engineering challenge. I’m excited for our customers to soon experience the future of Alexa, and to hear their feedback, so that we can continue to invent and evolve the experience for them.
As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me or anyone on the leadership team if you have any questions.
-Daniel
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