Amazon's Twitch Implements Major Layoffs; CEO Describes Decision As 'Incredibly Difficult'

Mar 21, 202316:09 UTC

Dan Clancy, the newly appointed CEO of Twitch, has announced more than 400 layoffs at the live video streaming service company.

"Today I shared with Twitch employees that we’ve made the difficult decision to reduce the size of our workforce, which results in us having to say goodbye to just over 400 people," Clancy wrote in a statement. "As a company focused on building community together, this decision was incredibly difficult and one we did not make without considerable thought."

Clancy, who has been the CEO for less than a week now, cited the "current macroeconomic environment" as the reason behind the workforce reduction at Twitch.

"Like many companies, our business has been impacted by the current macroeconomic environment, and user and revenue growth has not kept pace with our expectations. In order to run our business sustainably, we’ve made the very difficult decision to shrink the size of our workforce," he said.

This news comes on the heels of 9,000 layoffs announced by Amazon.com Inc AMZN, Twitch's parent company. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced the company had plans to dismiss more workers in order to cut costs through a memo to employees.

"For several years leading up to this one, most of our businesses added a significant amount of headcount. This made sense given what was happening in our businesses and the economy as a whole," Jassy said.

"However, given the uncertain economy in which we reside, and the uncertainty that exists in the near future, we have chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount."

Price Action: Shares of Amazon were trading 1.62% higher at $99.29 on Tuesday at the time of publication.

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