Amazon's 'Project Dawn' email leak accidentally exposes global redundancies

Amazon has inadvertently revealed a new round of job cuts after an internal draft email about the redundancies was mistakenly sent to staff, exposing further global redundacnies across its cloud computing division.

The message, written by Colleen Aubrey, a senior vice president at Amazon Web Services (AWS), was attached to a calendar invite distributed late on Tuesday by an executive assistant to multiple employees. The invitation carried the subject line “Send Project Dawn email,” referencing the internal codename for the latest restructuring effort.

The draft email outlined job losses affecting staff in the US, Canada and Costa Rica and framed the move as part of a broader drive to “strengthen the company” by streamlining its structure. Employees who saw the note understood immediately that redundancies were underway, even though no formal announcement had yet been made. The invite was quickly withdrawn following the blunder. Amazon's stock price was down 0.94% as of 11:37am ET Wednesday.

In the draft, Aubrey described the cuts as an extension of efforts over the past year to flatten management layers, boost individual accountability and reduce bureaucracy so teams could “move faster for customers.” She acknowledged the human cost of the changes, saying such decisions were difficult but were taken to better position both AWS and Amazon for long-term success.

The leak confirms what many inside the company had expected. Amazon announced about 14,000 job cuts in late October, and staff had anticipated a second, substantial wave early this year. One former employee, who left as part of the October redundancies, said workers widely believed leadership was ultimately aiming to remove roughly 30,000 roles through multiple rounds of cuts running into late May.

Those whose positions are eliminated are being encouraged to apply for a relatively small pool of open roles elsewhere in the company. Employees unable to secure a new job internally are receiving severance packages tied to their length of service.

Jassy’s era of ‘rethinking everything’

The restructuring at Amazon comes under the watch of CEO Andy Jassy, who took over from founder Jeff Bezos four years ago and has since presided over multiple rounds of redundancieas in 2023, 2024 and 2025.

Jassy has also pushed for a tougher workplace regime. Unlike many of itstech peers, Amazon now requires most corporate staff to be in the office five days a week, reversing the flexible arrangements adopted during the pandemic. The company has intensified cost controls as well, including scrutinising corporate mobile phone use within AWS in an effort to rein in a longstanding $50 monthly reimbursement benefit, according to previous reports.

Amazon’s latest reductions add to a brutal run of job cuts across Silicon Valley and the wider tech industry since 2022. Major players including Meta, Google and Microsoft have collectively shed tens of thousands of roles as they reset after a pandemic-era hiring surge and confront slowing growth and rising costs.

Industry tracker Layoffs.fyi estimates that roughly 700,000 tech workers worldwide have lost their jobs in the past four years. This year alone, Meta has announced more cuts affecting several hundred employees, while Pinterest this week moved to eliminate about 700 positions.

Taken together, the surprise email leak, ongoing job cuts and strategic refocus underscore how deeply Amazon is reshaping itself, from its corporate culture to its retail footprint, as it confronts a more constrained and competitive era for global technology companies.