Amazon has confirmed it will cut 16,000 jobs globally, following an accidental email that revealed the layoffs hours before the official announcement. The email, sent late Tuesday and quickly canceled, mentioned reductions in the US, Canada, and Costa Rica as part of efforts to "strengthen the company." Early Wednesday, Amazon said these job cuts are part of plans to "remove bureaucracy" and help the company move faster for customers. Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior vice president of people experience and technology, explained, "While many teams finalized their organizational changes in October, other teams did not complete that work until now." The layoffs are linked to "Project Dawn," a code name inside Amazon for this round of cuts. A draft email by Colleen Aubrey from Amazon Web Services detailed that this work has been ongoing for over a year and is designed to reduce layers and increase ownership. Employees had expected job cuts totalling around 30,000, with some rounds already completed in October and now continuing into 2024. Laid-off workers were invited to reapply for open positions, though those opportunities are limited, and severance pay was provided based on company tenure. Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy has pushed for strict workplace policies, including mandatory full-time office work, and is focused on cutting costs wherever possible. In a recent email, he called this a "time to rethink everything we've ever done." Along with unemployment announcements, Amazon will close about 70 of its Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go grocery stores, shifting focus to expanding Whole Foods Market. This follows a trend across major tech companies like Meta, Google, and Microsoft, which have cut hundreds of thousands of jobs since 2022 due to shifting market conditions.