Nicholas Lee Plumb, a Texas Republican candidate, who announced that he was affected by the latest layoff of Amazon, shared an internal message claiming that it was sent to him by a former colleague, where a discussion about a new engineering team in India was going on. “We are also forming a new engineering team in India to accelerate product development while supporting operational and data engineering needs,” the purported message read. The claim, not verified, went viral as many similar claims surfaced that only US employees in certain teams were impacted etc. Amazon announced reductions of 16,000 and called it the organizational changes that started in October. “The reductions we are making today will impact approximately 16,000 roles across Amazon, and we’re again working hard to support everyone whose role is impacted. That starts with offering most US-based employees 90 days to look for a new role internally (timing will vary internationally based on local and country level requirements). Then, for teammates who are unable to find a new role at Amazon or who choose not to look for one, we’ll provide transition support including severance pay, outplacement services, health insurance benefits (as applicable), and more,” Beth Galetti, senior vice president of People Expertise and Technology at Amazon wrote in her blog. “While we’re making these changes, we’ll also continue hiring and investing in strategic areas and functions that are critical to our future. We’re still in the early stages of building every one of our businesses and there’s significant opportunity ahead,” Galetti clarified that there is no freeze in hiring. Speaking about his own layoff, Plumb earlier said that it was neither performance not AI that led to the layoffs. “It’s enabled by a global labor market with almost no guardrails. Companies aren’t just competing on products anymore, they’re arbitraging labor across borders, wages, benefits and worker protections. When replacement is cheaper than retention, the decision gets framed as a strategy instead of consequence,” he said. “AI becomes the excuse, not the cause. It’s the clean narrative that hides what’s actually happening: experienced workers being swapped out through global labor substitution while leadership talks about “efficiency” and ‘the future of work’,” he added. The layoff announcement came weeks after Amazon allowed H-1B workers who got stuck in India because of visa stamping delay to work remotely.
