Months after Amazon's own job cuts, Amazon Web Services' marketing chief asked employees to recruit recently laid off Meta workers, saying the organization is understaffed and scrambling to fill open roles.
During an internal staff meeting late last month, AWS Chief Marketing Officer Julia White was asked about attrition in her organization and whether the company was considering compensation changes to improve retention.
White said hiring was the bigger challenge. AWS's marketing unit had roughly 160 open positions at the time. "That's a lot," she said, while stressing that accelerating hiring was one of her top priorities.
"If you have friends and family or colleagues — or I know Meta just laid off 8,000 people — any of those great people you know, ping them," she said. "We have jobs and we need top talent here." Business Insider reviewed a recording of the meeting.
The comments highlight a tension inside Amazon as some parts of the company cut jobs while others are competing aggressively for talent.
Amazon spent much of the past year conducting one of the largest layoffs in its history, eliminating more than 30,000 jobs across multiple rounds of cuts, including positions within AWS marketing. Smaller layoffs have continued across parts of Amazon's retail and robotics organizations in recent months.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy previously said his company's layoffs were intended to address organizational and cultural issues. The job cuts have unfolded as Amazon is on pace to deploy a record $200 billion on capital expenditures this year.
An Amazon spokesperson said the company has been working to reduce management layers and bureaucracy while continuing to hire in key areas. When announcing layoffs in January, Amazon said it would keep investing in "strategic areas" critical to its future.
"We're focused on hiring and developing the best talent at AWS and across Amazon's range of businesses," the spokesperson said in a statement.
'It's a hot market'
White said attrition within AWS's marketing unit remains higher than she would like, though it has stabilized and is beginning to trend lower.
"It's a hot market," she said. "Our talented people are in high demand."
White said compensation is one of the factors that comes up in exit interviews and that AWS is "trying to take the right compensation actions to make sure that people feel fairly compensated." Amazon's pay model has been flagged internally as a headwind in the competition for top talent, Business Insider previously reported.
But she said pay is not the primary reason employees leave.
"Compensation is one of the things, but it's not the top one," White said, adding that employees also cite lifestyle considerations, career growth opportunities, and other factors.
The Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider the company's compensation philosophy is "intended to attract, retain, and motivate the highest-caliber talent, and we regularly evaluate our compensation to make sure it's competitive."
'Deeply siloed'
In January, White internally announced the departures of two of the organization's most senior leaders: Leah Bibbo, a longtime product marketing executive who helped build AWS's US public relations organization, and Jen Hartford, the veteran marketing leader who helped launch and grow AWS's annual re:Invent conference.
The leadership changes were accompanied by a reorganization that consolidated several marketing functions under Tim Hoppin, Steve Sloan, and Kristin Shaff.
During last month's internal staff meeting, White said the team needs to move from a "deeply siloed operating model" to a "much more collaborative one." The transition has created growing pains as teams learn new ways of working together, she added.
"We have too many handoffs and not enough handshakes," she said. "We're in that refinement curve of making sure it's efficient."
Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected] or Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp at 650-942-3061. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.
Read next
Eugene is Business Insider’s Chief Tech Correspondent, where he leads coverage of Amazon. His reporting spans the company’s retail operations, AWS, Alexa, and its secretive internal work culture.Previously, he worked at CNBC, Fortune Magazine Korea, and Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun. He holds degrees from NYU and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.In 2022, Eugene broke a story uncovering Amazon’s practice of deceptively enrolling customers in Prime and deliberately making cancellation difficult. A year later, the Federal Trade Commission sued the company, citing his reporting. That case culminated in a record $2.5 billion settlement in 2025.His reporting has earned multiple honors, including the SF Press Club’s Bay Area Journalism Award and SPJ NorCal’s Excellence in Journalism Award.Eugene lives in the Bay Area. Contact him via email at [email protected], or Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp at 650-942-3061. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely. ExpertiseAmazon, Jeff Bezos, Andy Jassy, e-commerce, and cloud computing.Popular ArticlesAmazon:Internal Amazon emails give an exclusive look at how CEO Andy Jassy has started to run the company, with obsessive attention to the retail business and what some employees feel is micromanagingAndy Jassy will be the next CEO of Amazon. Insiders dish on what it's like to work for Jeff Bezos' successor, who built AWS into a $40 billion business.Internal documents show Amazon has for years knowingly tricked people into signing up for Prime subscriptions. 'We have been deliberately confusing,' former employee says.Inside Amazon's flailing brick-and-mortar ambitions: missed projections, pressure to cut costs, and a war with Whole FoodsInside Amazon's complex employee-review system, where workers feel left in the dark and managers expect to give 5% of reports bad reviewsAfter 28 years, 'Day 2' finally arrives at AmazonAWS, Alexa, healthcare:Inside Amazon's struggle to break into the lucrative market for SaaS business applications, including an internal pitch to buy $38 billion HubSpotInside Amazon's struggle to crack Nvidia's AI-chip dominanceAmazon's AI data center dream runs into the reality of 'zombie' facilities, higher costs, and labor shortagesAmazon is gutting its voice assistant, Alexa. Employees describe a division in crisis and huge losses on 'a wasted opportunity.'Amazon is working on a new 'Remarkable Alexa,' but internal politics and technical issues plague the projectAmazon projected huge losses from its healthcare business in 2024, but strong sales growth, internal document reveals
