Amazon is severely hit by the wave of misfortune currently wrecking the revenue of tech companies, forcing them to trim their workforce. Early this month, the company lost its place in the league of trillion dollar companies. Now, it is following the steps of other companies like Meta, Facebook’s parent company, and Twitter, in laying off large number of employees.

The Times reports that Amazon is planning to lay off approximately 10,000 employees in corporate and technology roles beginning this week.

The cutting of workforce comes close to Amazon’s busiest period of the year, underlining the weight of the company’s revenue downturn.

Shares of Amazon were down about 2.5% Monday. CNBC noted more in the report below.

The cuts would be the largest in the company’s history, and would primarily impact Amazon’s devices organization, retail division and human resources, according to the report. The reported layoffs would represent less than 1% of Amazon’s global workforce and 3% of its corporate employees.

The report follows headcount reductions at other tech firms. Meta announced last week that it’s laying off more than 13% of its staff, or more than 11,000 employees, and Twitter laid off approximately half of its workforce in the days following Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of the company.

Amazon reported 798,000 employees at the end of 2019 but had 1.6 million full and part-time employees as of Dec. 31 2021, a 102% increase. The New York Times said the total number of layoffs “remains fluid” and could change.

The holiday shopping season is critical for Amazon, and usually, one where the company has increased its headcount to meet demand. But Andy Jassy, who took over as CEO in July 2021, has been in cost-cutting mode to preserve cash as the company confronts slowing sales and a gloomy global economy.

The company has already announced plans to freeze hiring for corporate roles in its retail business. In recent months, Amazon shut down its telehealth service, discontinued a quirky, video-calling projector for kids, closed all but one of its U.S. call centers, axed its roving delivery robot, shuttered underperforming brick-and-mortar chains, and is closing, canceling or delaying some new warehouse locations.

Amazon reported disappointing third-quarter earnings in October that spooked investors and caused shares to sink more than 13%. It marked the first time Amazon’s market cap fell below $1 trillion since April 2020, and the report was the second time this year that Amazon’s results have been enough to spark a double-digit percentage selloff. The selloff continued for days after the report and erased almost all of the stock’s pandemic surge.

Amazon stock is down about 41% for the year, more than the 14% drop in the S&P 500, and is on pace for its worst year since 2008.

Amazon plans to start letting go of 10,000 corporate and tech employees — or about 3% of white-collar staff — as soon as this week, according to The New York Times, which cited anonymous sources. The cuts, also reported by Reuters and The Wall Street Journal, will be the biggest in the history of the e-commerce giant, and would target units where growth is slowing amid a drop-off in pandemic online sales: retail, human resources and the devices unit that houses virtual assistant Alexa. The retrenchment by the e-commerce giant during the peak holiday shopping season underscores the economic uncertainty facing businesses, especially in technology. The company reduced head count by 80,000 from April through September, mostly through attrition, and has frozen hiring at both the corporate and hourly level. (LinkedIn News)

In the last three years, the world economy has been greatly impacted by major disruptive events. In the year 2019, the outbreak of the Covid19 pandemic did not only raise health and pharmaceutical concerns but also affected the economy and social relations. These influenced several policies that have developed over the years.

One of the most felt economic impacts of the pandemic was the supply chain disruption which caused logistic bottlenecks and slowed down the operations of many businesses across the world. The global supply chain downtime also had inflationary effects. In early 2021 when the world had just begun to recover from the Covid19 shock, there was a sharp increase in global demand for food and non-food items which met with shortages due to the supply chain that was still reviving slowly. This brought about an increase in inflation even as unemployment remained high in many parts of the world.

Much later than the Covid19 outbreak, the supply chain of cereals and gas which are essential commodities in many parts of the world, had another stop-gap due to the Russian-Ukrainian war. The war was said to have compounded the Covid19 pandemic induced damage to the global economy which according to the world bank may be “protracted feeble growth and elevated inflation”.

While few businesses have exhibited full recovery from the Covid19 shock; some have yet to fully recover and some have been forced to wound up due to inability to adapt and build resilience. The pandemic and its ensuing events spurred the need to prioritize speed in adapting to the fluidity of the modern business climate.

The pandemic came with a lot of eye-opening experiences regarding how the future of work will be shaped. With the rising pace of telecommuting, hybrid working and increasing demand for digital-data skills, the will and the ability to avoid culture lag is very central to driving growth in the new normal. Hence, business leaders are preferred to seek the broader perspective in navigating barriers and exploring opportunities in the new normal.

For entrepreneurs and business leaders to excel in the new economy, they need to critically adjust their business models to accommodate the new reality, institute structures and cultures that are resilient to sudden disruptions and increase investment targeted towards improving their team as well as their public imaget.

This article by McKinsey explains how leaders can adapt to a very different future; it suggests five-action points that are strategic to driving excellent performance and growth in the post-covid-19 economy.

First, leaders need to centre their strategies on sustainability; secondly, they need to develop a capacity to transform in the cloud; thirdly, they need to increase investment targeted towards improving their talents and human resource strength; fourthly, they need to prioritize speed in adapting to the fluidity and fickleness of the modern business climate; and lastly, they must consistently go about their operations with the central purpose in the mind.

Several entities numbering above 150 including FTX.com, Alameda Research, FTX US, filed for bankruptcy last weekend following the Insolvency of FTX.com which resulted in the drastic decline in the value of its native token $FTT. – SBF CEO of FTX filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy for FTX, Alameda Research and others.

1) Hi all:

Today, I filed FTX, FTX US, and Alameda for voluntary Chapter 11 proceedings in the US.

— SBF (@SBF_FTX) November 11, 2022

BlockFi has also gone busto thus announcing limitations on Withdrawals and other Platform functions will be halted until clear direction on the FTX/Alameda Research Crisis. 

pic.twitter.com/zNF1uP6evl

— BlockFi (@BlockFi) November 11, 2022

Amidst FTX face off Crypto.com showed that more of their customer deposits are in ShibaInu Token than Ethereum on its latest released Proof of Reserves.

My key take away from FTXCRASH:

Government will step in with HEAVY regulations, introducing CBDC with UNIQUE wallets linked to Identity Cards. We can still make money, but taxes and new rules will make it harder for retail money.

Cryptocurrency will fall under serious SEC and CBDC regulations, MT GOX exploited the space Eight (8) years ago The Inside Story of Mt. Gox, Bitcoin’s $460 Million Disaster, however the Crypto Industry survived that impasse, Crypto in general will face Stiff Scrutiny and intense Criticism in the coming months – SBF was trying to enable congress overhang by going after Decentralized Finance (DEFI) and forming monopolistic arrangements which will see FTX champion Crypto Sovereignty across the globe but unfortunately he’s running an entity strictly on Ponziconomics.

What assets does exchange’s hold? And I mean tangible assets. A Bank may fail, but still has e.g Customer Debt as assets that can be the counterpoint to a bailout. When you hold Tokens whose value is 100% perception and speculation, no sane person or entity would bail you out.

It is the operational practice within FTX and Alameda Research that got screwed up. I have no doubt CZ-Binance saw an opportunity to take an aim at his competitor and seized it, but I’m not sure even he knew how bad it was. 

Interestingly, CZ-BINANCE is Launching a Crypto Industry Recovery Fund to help cushion the effects of uncertainty’s. FTX going down is not good for anyone in the industry, but it needs to be done to get scammers and manipulators off the industry.

To reduce further cascading negative effects of FTX, Binance is forming an industry recovery fund, to help projects who are otherwise strong, but in a liquidity crisis. More details to come soon. In the meantime, please contact Binance Labs if you think you qualify. 1/2

— CZ ? Binance (@cz_binance) November 14, 2022

When $FTTC, Zack Tackett Former head of Institutional Sales at FTX is suggesting Two Formulas A/B: Bankruptcy or Issuing A consolidation Token ? Alameda has over leveraged positions, they can’t bring $FTT back to top. At this point I don’t think even CZ can handle the hole created by SBF’s FTX, this situation is presumably dragging other Crypto Exchanges on the part of Insolvency – Panic Withdrawals from DEXs and CEXs will lead to more catastrophic cryptocrash.

1/I obviously have 0 say at this point, but hey, interested to hear others' thoughts:
Two options:
A) bankruptcy
B) token

[THESE ARE NOT CONCRETE NUMBERS]
Liabilities: -8.8bn

Liquid assets: 900m
Less liquid: 2.037bn
Illiquid: 3.2bn

liquid hole: -7.9bn
illiquid hole: -2.66bn

— Zane Tackett (@tackettzane) November 11, 2022

On the other hand due to rising fears amongst Crypto enthusiasts, the campaign on Self- Fund Custody has generated increased momentum, Crypto Analysts and OGs on Twitter has relayed on the need for Cryptocurrency degenerates to save funds using a self custody hardware interface presumably a Ledger Nano device – thus leading to a potential increase in transfer of funds from Centralized Entities, Binance recently tweeted about ‘Self-Custody using a Hardware Wallet’;

“Binance has industry leading security practices in place to ensure that your funds are always SAFU. However, if you want to go down the route of self-custody, you can store your crypto offline through a hardware wallet”. 

Going forward the Cryptocurrency industry will face a strong resentment from Institutional Investors, Crypto Users and Governments across the globe owing to the Lackadaisical attributes of SBF and Alameda Research. 

Written by; Paul Ugbede Godwin.