One Amazon team posted nearly 25,000 job openings last year — when only 7,800 had been approved
Getty
- A team at Amazon had posted 25,000 open jobs last year, but only 7,800 were approved, Insider found.
- A lack of oversight over the job-posting process led to "over-hiring," an internal document says.
- This week, Amazon announced it was cutting 9,000 jobs in addition to the 18,000 it cut in January.
Amazon Web Service's utility computing team had 24,988 job openings posted in 2022 — but only 7,798 of those positions were actually approved to be filled, an internal document reviewed by Insider revealed.
The document shows Amazon's lack of oversight in its job-posting operations, which lead to "over-hiring" and "a process prone to inconsistency, error, and potential mis-use," per the document.
Amazon's "over-hiring" problem led "to span of control and level ratio defects," the document said. "Span of control" refers to how many direct reports each manager has. Level, as Insider reported, refers to how senior an employee is. Defects in Amazon's "level ratio" could mean its unit hired more over-qualified or under-qualified people than what was budgeted for.
A former recruiting manager told Insider that Amazon's job postings were meant to be "actively" filled as the company aimed to expand during a booming economy, but because of the lack of oversight, there were "over-hiring issues" and leaders at the company would "squeeze people in where they could."
Amazon did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
The tech giant conducted its largest layoffs in its company history in January, eliminating 18,000 roles that were mostly in its Amazon Stores and People Experience and Technology Solutions divisions.
"This year's review has been more difficult given the uncertain economy and that we've hired rapidly over the last several years," CEO Andy Jassy wrote in the January memo to staff.
Jassy announced an additional round of layoffs this week that will cut 9,000 employees, including some in Amazon Web Services, Twitch, and advertising.
In his memo to staff announcing the additional layoffs, Jassy said that not all of Amazon's "teams were done with their analyses in the late fall; and rather than rush through these assessments without the appropriate diligence, we chose to share these decisions as we've made them so people had the information as soon as possible."
Read the full Insider story here.