Amazon Web Services is curtailing hiring in multiple divisions, seven current employees told Insider, an abrupt about-face from last week, when executives hinted that Amazon's lucrative cloud unit might be spared from cutbacks hitting the rest of the company.
The sales and marketing unit will freeze hiring until the end of the first quarter next year, according to one of the current employees, who said the move was announced to some managers on Wednesday. All open positions will be closed, and only critical roles will be filled, that person said.
While some employees in the sales and marketing division said they were not aware of the hiring freeze, they have been told that hiring targets have already been met for the year.
Meanwhile, at least two AWS engineering orgs are planning to freeze headcount until the end of 2023, according to two current employees. People who depart may be replaced, but the goal is to keep total headcount static, according to two of the current employees.
Internally, Amazon has been adamant that its staffing changes do not constitute a "freeze," because certain roles will still be filled with executive approval, another current employee said. All the people who spoke with Insider asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters.
Amazon is pausing new job creation in numerous divisions "for a few months," spokesperson Brad Glasser confirmed to Insider, due to "an uncertain economy and how many people we've hired over the past few years."
"We still intend to hire a meaningful number of people in 2023, and remain excited about our significant investments in our larger businesses, as well as newer initiatives like Prime Video, Alexa, Grocery, Kuiper, Zoox, and Healthcare," Glasser added.
Overall, Amazon is attempting to cut costs in the midst of slowing growth and fears of a looming recession. The company has slashed its robotics team, healthcare unit, as well as numerous other pie-in-the-sky ventures, including a virtual travel experiences division that launched in the pandemic.
But in the company's earnings call last week, executives signaled that the company's profit drivers, advertising and AWS, could receive special treatment.
"We're going to continue to make sure that we have strong funding for businesses like AWS and advertising, where we're still early growth, and we need to support our customers and grow the business," Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky told reporters in a conference call after Amazon's earnings release.
AWS reported its slowest revenue growth ever last quarter, which Olsavsky attributed to reduced enterprise spending as cloud customers gird themselves for potential economic turmoil.
Amazon announced a hiring freeze in its advertising business on Tuesday, Bloomberg reported. The New York Post reported last week on a hiring freeze in AWS.
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