[noodle]

If they were making record profits, they would be looking to expand their profitable divisions, would they not? They would likely not lay people off, but reorganize internally to move resources away from failing areas and into the clearly thriving, very profitable areas; or start something completely new.

Hiring one good employee is expensive and difficult.

[shmatt]

I feel like im stating the obvious but you can't just double the headcount on AWS and expect AWS profits to double

The profitable divisions are probably still hiring, and there might be an option for some of the 18,000 to interview internally before getting terminated, some companies gave that option (30 day internal interview deadline). But you can't just move 3,000 Alexa employees to AWS and expect things to go smoothly

[firstSpeaker]

Have they doubled the number of employees at AWS? During what time period?

[rco8786]

Why then, did they make the decision to do so?

[P_I_Staker]

Yeah, unless you see this as a cheap opportunity to slurp up talent and ditch anyone that's seen as a "problem".

[moonchrome]

I'm sure the warehouse workers can easily be retrained to work on AWS. There's even data warehousing which would be a natural transition.

[noodle]

The article is about corporate staff, not warehouse workers.