Amazon’s Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology, Beth Galetti, announced a significant round of nearly 16,000 corporate layoffs. This move aims to streamline operations by reducing management layers and bureaucracy. Affected US employees have 90 days to seek internal roles or will receive severance packages.

Amazon has announced another major round of job cuts, with nearly 16,000 corporate roles set to be eliminated worldwide. The move comes just months after an earlier wave of layoffs and is part of the company’s broader push to simplify operations and trim internal layers.The update was communicated to employees by Beth Galetti, Amazon’s Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology, a role that places her at the centre of the company’s human resources strategy and internal tech systems.Galetti has been with Amazon since 2013, when she joined as a vice president in the HR division. Before that, she spent close to a decade at FedEx, where she worked across senior roles in technology and operations. Over the years, she steadily moved up the ranks at Amazon, eventually taking charge of large-scale people operations and workforce technology.In her message to staff, Galetti described the layoffs as part of a fresh set of organisational changes aimed at making the company leaner. According to her, the goal is to reduce layers of management, cut down on bureaucracy, and give teams clearer ownership of their work.

FILE – The Amazon logo is displayed at a news conference in New York on Sept. 28, 2011. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

Employees based in the US who are affected by the decision will be given 90 days to explore internal opportunities within Amazon. Those who choose not to or are unable to move into new roles will receive severance packages and additional support, the company said.Beyond layoffs, Galetti oversees systems and policies that support more than a million Amazon employees globally. Her portfolio has included major initiatives such as workforce development programmes and the rollout of Amazon’s return-to-office policy.Galetti holds a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Lehigh University and an MBA from Colorado Technical University. Outside Amazon, she has served as the Board Chair of global health nonprofit PATH since 2022 and is involved in several community-focused initiatives.Based in Seattle, Galetti lives with her husband and two daughters, balancing one of the most influential HR roles in corporate America with her work beyond the company.