Amazon CEO Jassy Helped Ruin It

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.
Amazon CEO Jassy Helped Ruin It

© Christian Guiton / iStock via Getty Images

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction) will lay off an extraordinarily high number of 18,000 people. This occurred when Wall Street gave up on the tech giant, collapsing its shares by over 50% in the past year, during which Andy Jassy ran the company.
[in-text-ad]
Jassy blamed the firings on the economy, which is only partially true. He has to take a substantial part of the blame. He wrote, describing the problem, “Amazon has weathered uncertain and difficult economies in the past, and we will continue to do so.” (See which American tech giants laid off the most employees last year.)
[nativounit]
One term used by large tech companies when they have cut jobs recently is “overhired.” Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, stated during its downsizing, “As our revenue accelerated through the pandemic, we hired too many people leading into this economic downturn we’re now facing, and I take responsibility for that.” Like Jassy, he will keep his job and likely will make several million dollars in 2022 compensation, which will be evident when the companies file their proxies.
[wallst_email_signup]
Amazon’s problem was first evident when it announced its third-quarter earnings. Both its huge North American e-commerce business and international e-commerce operation lost money. The company’s bottom line was saved by the success of Amazon web services, the company’s cloud computing operations.

A UBS analyst recently posted worries about Microsoft’s cloud operations, warning that Amazon may hit the same problems.
[recirclink id=1188369]
Jassy was left in control of Amazon when founder Jeff Bezos decided he wanted to live a life not controlled by his work at Amazon. The handoff occurred on July 5, 2021. Bezos’s mistake was to promote someone who did not have the strategic sense to keep Amazon’s expenses in check. His decisions have been crippling, and thousands of workers have paid the price.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

Featured Reads

Our top personal finance-related articles today. Your wallet will thank you later.

Continue Reading

Top Gaining Stocks

CBOE Vol: 1,568,143
PSKY Vol: 12,285,993
STX Vol: 7,378,346
ORCL Vol: 26,317,675
DDOG Vol: 6,247,779

Top Losing Stocks

LKQ
LKQ Vol: 4,367,433
CLX Vol: 13,260,523
SYK Vol: 4,519,455
MHK Vol: 1,859,865
AMGN Vol: 3,818,618