Amazon, Strife, Lyft see hiring freezes, layoffs amid looming recession

Amazon has announced to freeze new hirings in its corporate workforce, with the global economy "in an uncertain place"

Amazon joined other US tech companies as it announced freeze in new hirings in its corporate workforce sighting uncertainity in global economy.

Beth Galetti, Amazon's senior vice president of people experience and technology, confirmed the move in a memo that the company had already begun pausing or slowing hiring in various corporate departments in "recent weeks".

"We're facing an unusual macro-economic environment, and want to balance our hiring and investments with being thoughtful about this economy," Galetti wrote.

"With fewer people to hire at this moment, this should give each team an opportunity to further prioritise what matters most to customers and the business, and to be more productive," he added.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has been looking for ways to cut costs across the company.

"Good companies that last a long period of time, who are thinking about the long term, always have this push and pull. There are some years where they're expanding really broadly. Some years where they're checking in and working on profitability, tightening the belt a little bit," he said recently.

Galetti said that the company anticipates "keeping this pause in place for the next few months, and will continue to monitor what we're seeing in the economy and the business to adjust as we think makes sense".

"In general, depending on the business or area of the company, we will hire backfills to replace employees who move on to new opportunities, and there are some targeted places where we will continue to hire people incrementally," he noted.

Tech industry has played a crucial role in the US economy over the past decade. But recently, a trend in slowed hiring and mass layoffs has been observed among tech majors as well as small tech companies.

The ride-hailing service Lyft also said it would cut 13% of its employees, or about 650 of its 5,000 workers.

Payment processing platform Strife said it would cut 14% of its employees, roughly 1,100 jobs.

Meta and Amazon have slowed down hiring from past few months. And smaller tech companies like Robinhood and Coinbase have announced layoffs. 

Google and YouTube's parent company Alphabet, also announced that they will hire less than half the number of people hired in previous quarter.

Microsoft too had told its investors last week that new hires in this quarter should remain minimal.