Amazon cloud unit to begin hiring in 2023

Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud unit is planning to increase its headcount next year, and building new data centers. Earlier this month, the firm instituted hiring curbs across corporate groups, pausing recruiting except in certain areas.

The company also plans to cut about 10,000 jobs. Senior Vice President Matt Garman, who oversees Amazon Web Services’ sales and marketing teams, expects both his organization and the wider AWS business to add staff in 2023.

Matt Garman said, “I anticipate that we actually will add some more headcount next year. Our business is still growing rapidly. We’d gone through a couple years where we just hadn't done it. It was, frankly, time. We have a pause and, and I actually think our teams all are embracing it. We’ve grown so rapidly that a lot of times from an organizational point of view, it’s healthy to have a time of digestion.”

The company increased the sales staff to bag contracts from large corporate and government entities. Garman added, “We scaled really rapidly over the last couple years because we started from zero. I think at this point we’ve done a pretty good job there. I think we’re still smaller than some of our competitors, but not that many of them.”

Sales in Amazon’s cloud unit totalled $20.5 billion during the three months ended in September, up 27%, however, the slowest year-over-year growth since Amazon began breaking out the division’s performance in 2014, as some businesses sought to slow their technology spending or make cuts to weather an economic downturn.