Soon after Andy Jassy announced the “most difficult” decision in his short tenure as Amazon’s chief executive was to make about 10,000 “role eliminations”, the axe began to swing at the company’s low-margin and costly hardware divisions.
According to several employees contacted by the Financial Times, teams working on the Alexa voice assistant, Kindle ereader and Halo health tracking device were among the first to have been told that they were among the dismissals taking place this month, following the tech giant’s “routine” yearly review into its business performance.
“It’s not surprising that that’s where they decided to start,” said one employee on the Kindle team. “What isn’t clear to any of us is if it ends there.”