Sodapoppin was shocked to discover that the Twitch employees dismissed on March 20 were not told who was being laid off before the public announcement.
The layoffs are part of wider layoffs across Amazon, Twitch’s parent company, which involve cutting around 9,000 staffers. This means that Twitch will see 400 people leave its team.
Sodapoppin, who uses Twitch as his platform of choice, was reading the briefing when he realized the staffers had not been told who was leaving the company.
“Wait, the people who got fired don’t even know who yet? Oh my god. That’s crazy.
“I mean I don’t know how this kind of stuff works, I’m just a stupid streamer. But that sucks. That’s got to be stressful as f*ck.
“There are 1100 people working and 400 people got fired? That’s almost half. That’s a 50% chance.
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Why is Twitch laying off so many people?
These dismissals are part of Amazon’s wider business strategy to cut down on staff numbers.
In a memo, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that the push in recent years to rapidly hire more people across Amazon had made economic sense, but that the current instability meant it was now time to rollback on some of those expansions.
He said: “Given the uncertain economy in which we reside, and the uncertainty that exists in the near future, we have chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount.”
For more news on Twitch, check out our coverage of Twitch’s new CEO.