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Amazon Employees Respond to Layoff Concerns with Internal Memes

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Amazon Layoffs Expected

Amazon is anticipated to cut thousands of additional corporate positions as early as next week. This follows a previous round of approximately 14,000 job eliminations in October.

Employees Turn to Humor Amidst Uncertainty

In the absence of official companywide communication regarding the impending cuts, Amazon employees have utilized an internal Slack channel with over 26,000 members to post memes and jokes. This activity is reportedly a method for employees to manage tension.

The content of these memes often references Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos's "two-pizza rule," which advocated for keeping meetings small. Employees are applying this concept to highlight the expected reduction in team sizes.

  • One meme depicted a small pizza slice captioned "how we feed two pizza teams."
  • Another meme featured two Amazon Web Services-branded pizza boxes with the caption "did someone say 2 pizza team?", potentially referencing expected cuts within the cloud division.

Comments in the Slack channel included an employee noting:

"I don't think I've ever been on a team that could be completely fed with just two reasonably sized pizzas until you were still hungry very frugal."

The employee also mentioned "Increasing 'span-of-control' for managers seems to be the new rage." Discussions further included specifying pizza types and sizes.

Broader Memes Reflect Anxiety

Beyond the "two-pizza rule," employees shared additional memes reflecting general uncertainty:

  • One meme referenced a rumored January 27th date, using a scene from "The Shining."
  • Another meme, using the "panik/kalm" template, depicted an email not working and included the phrase "Mail not working (have I become Nimble)?!"), referencing CEO Andy Jassy's past remarks about cutting jobs for agility.
  • Checklist memes for January 27th included "able to login," "mail and Slack works," and "no random HR meeting in calendar."

One post expressed general anxiety:

"I don't know what will happen on 27 Jan and at this point I'm too afraid to ask."

Amazon did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment regarding these reports. In 2023, Google employees also shared memes internally following layoffs.