Amazon Hit By Layoff Email Blunder? Leaked 'Project Dawn' Details Spark Online Backlash

An internal AWS message reportedly jumps the gun on job cuts, sparking fury on social media just days before Q4 earnings.

• Amazon is widely expected to announce major layoffs this week.
• The e-commerce and cloud giant has been working to reduce management layers to reduce bureaucracy in decision-making.
• Late last year, Amazon removed about 14,000 roles.

Amazon.com, Inc. reportedly sent an email to its cloud unit employees informing them of forthcoming layoffs ahead of schedule, landing the company in an embarrassing situation.

Pressed The Send Button Too Soon

The email, sent to Amazon Web Services employees by Colleen Aubrey, senior vice president of applied AI solutions at AWS, incorrectly stated that employees in the U.S., Canada, and Costa Rica had already been informed they had lost their jobs. It also had a virtual meeting invitation.

Amazon is expected to formally announce company-wide job cuts impacting thousands of workers this week, including those in the Prime Video and human resources divisions, Reuters reported earlier, citing sources. The scope of the cuts and the teams affected are not yet known, although the news has spread widely.

"Changes like this are hard on everyone," Aubrey wrote in the email, reviewed by Reuters and Bloomberg. "These decisions are difficult and are made thoughtfully as we position our organization and AWS for future success."

The email referred to the layoff plan as "Project Dawn," and quickly spread across internal message boards, Slack, and social media. Reddit users slammed the ‘Project Dawn’ spin, and said lives of 30,000 workers would be “malformed,” not “transformed” – a jab at Amazon’s frequent framing of AI’s impact as transformative.

Joc Cuts Continue Into 2026

American workers and those working overseas for U.S. companies are in peril as job cuts have continued into 2026. Just this week, Pinterest announced that it would 15% of its workforce, or about 780 employees, while United Parcel Service announced 30,000 job cuts and the shuttering of two dozen facilities this year.

The latest retrenchment at Amazon would be on top of the 14,000 job cuts Amazon announced last October. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has been advocating for a flatter corporate structure for about two years. Last September, he detailed a few initiatives to reduce bureaucracy, which he said were essential to improving corporate culture and spurring innovation.

A Reddit user who claimed to have worked at AWS for six years admitted that the company has too many managers. “Many of them got promoted just because they kissed a** in the right circles to keep said circle going… (and) didn't provide support, information, or even act as a liaison,” they said in their post.  

Full Text Of Amazon's Internal Email

Although Aubrey's email was redacted almost immediately, it was screenshotted and reshared widely. Here’s one of those grabs from Reddit (Stocktwits hasn’t verified the content):

Amazon is scheduled to report fourth-quarter results next Thursday, with an analyst saying the layoffs, both previous and planned, would boost its margins.

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