Amazon is following other big companies and has instituted a hiring freeze at its corporate offices., Beth Galetti, Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology at Amazon, announced the change, saying that it expects the pause in hiring to continue for at least a few months.
Galetti said that the macro-economic situation, as well as the amount of hiring the company has done over the last few years, is the cause for the hiring pause. With the economy in an uncertain place and in light of how many people we have hired in the last few years, Andy and S-team decided this week to pause on new incremental hires in our corporate workforce. We had already done so in a few of our businesses in recent weeks and have added our other businesses to this approach.
Galetti went on to say that the hiring freeze should “give each team an opportunity to further prioritize what matters most to customers and the business, and to be more productive.” We’re facing an unusual macro-economic environment, and want to balance our hiring and investments with being thoughtful about this economy. This is not the first time that we’ve faced uncertain and challenging economies in our past. While we have had several years where we’ve expanded our headcount broadly, there have also been several years where we’ve tightened our belt and were more streamlined in how many people we added.