Amazon lays off some devices unit staff as it targets 10,000 cuts

Amazon.com Inc on Wednesday said it has laid off some employees in its devices group as a person familiar with the company said it still targeted around 10,000 job cuts, including in its retail division and human resources.

Amazon executive Dave Limp in a blog post said the company had decided to consolidate teams in its devices unit, which popularized speakers that consumers command through speech. It notified the employees it cut on Tuesday.

The company has offered voluntary buyouts to some human-resources staff, the source familiar with Amazon’s job-cut plans said.

A project inspired by a talking computer in science fiction show Star Trek, Alexa had garnered headcount that grew to 10,000 people by 2019.Founder Jeff Bezos later said the company often sold Alexa devices at a discount and sometimes below cost.

Dozens of individuals posted on the professional networking site LinkedIn to say Amazon had laid them off, among them people who claimed to work on privacy for Alexa and software for the company’s cloud gaming service Luna.