Amazon is slashing about 14,000 jobs, but the company’s HQ2 in Pentagon City will mostly be spared, ARLnow is told.
The company said in a Tuesday letter to employees that it is laying off thousands of corporate workers to reduce bureaucracy and “realize efficiency gains” in “this generation of AI.”
“We’re convinced that we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business,” wrote Beth Galetti, the company’s top HR executive.
However, the company says this has no significant impact on HQ2.
“These layoffs involve our corporate workforce and not our operations workforce,” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel told ARLnow.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy warned employees over the summer that the company expects to pare down its white-collar workforce in response to ongoing advances in AI.
“It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company,” Jassy wrote in June.
That same month, the Arlington County Board granted Amazon a three-year extension on yet-to-be-realized plans to build Phase 2 of its HQ2 campus at the intersection of S. Eads Street and 12th Street S. So far, there’s no update on the status of those plans, which would include the iconic “helix” tower.
