Everyone is at it. The hiring bonanza that happened, bizarrely, in the midst of COVID is over and now companies are left looking at their payroll and wincing. Consolidation and rationalisation are the order of the day as inflation drove up internet rates and therefore forces belt-tightening across both households and businesses. Even Amazon.
Facebook, Google, and Microsoft laid off over 10,000 staff each. Elon Musk famously identified that he didn’t actually need 75% of Twitter staff, especially the bossy hall monitor Gen Z’s that seemed legion and spent their working days like this:
Amazon also cut more than 27,000 jobs as part of the carnage that swept the bloated US tech sector as the reality bit when then good times ended.
Now they are set to go again, this time across their film and television divisions. That is Amazon Studios, Prime, MGM, and Twitch. Twitch alone is to lose 35% of its staff, about 500 employees. According to reports on Bloomberg and The Wrap, the employees were notified on Wednesday of the lay-offs.
Amazon acquired MGM and its legendary back catalogue for $8.5 billion in 2022 and this is the first major sign of increased integration. This comes at the same time as Amazon breaks the streaming covenant, just like the others, by rolling out ads and launching a premium ad-free tier.
That streaming free ride is over for studios.
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