Layoff Land: Verizon Drops 15K Jobs, Synopsys Cuts 2K & Amazon Sheds 660 In NYC

Layoffs in the tech land have been rampant over the past couple of years, and a large part of it is due to the emergence and advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI).

Recently, retailer Target cut 1,800 jobs, Meta dropped 600 employees, Paramount Skydance axed 1,000 personnel, among others.

This also included Amazon revealing plans to trim its workforce by over 14,000 corporate workers—a move that it acted upon in the past few days as well—but we’ll get to that after covering the larger, more recent numbers.
 

Verizon Plans To Lay Off 15,000 Workers

United States telecommunication company Verizon plans to lay off about 15% of its workforce or around 15,000 workers, marking the company’s largest-ever layoff, according to a Reuters report citing a person familiar with the matter.

It’s expected to reduce non-union management titles by over 20%.

The cuts are expected to begin as early as next week, following years of attempts to save costs by trimming the company’s workforce.

The company also plans to convert 180 corporate-owned retail stores into franchised operations.

The move comes just over a month after the company welcomed a new CEO in the form of Dan Schulman, who has also served as PayPal’s CEO.

While Verizon declined to comment on the move, at the time of this appointment the company’s new CEO, Schulman, said, “Verizon is at a critical juncture ... We are going to maximize our value propositions, reduce our cost to serve, and optimize our capital allocation to delight our customers, and deliver sustainable long-term growth for our shareholders.”

“We will be a simpler, leaner and scrappier business,” he added.

 

Synopsys To Cut 2,000 Jobs

At the beginning of 2024, Synopsys—which makes tools to design chips and boasts customers such as NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Intel and more—conveyed plans of acquiring engineering simulation software maker Ansys for $35 billion.

That deal closed in the middle of 2025—July 17 to be exact—but its effects are being felt now.

Through a recent regulatory filing, it was revealed that Synopsys is set to cut down its workforce by around 10% or around 2,000 workers, as it aims to redirect investment towards growth opportunities.

The company’s reductions are expected to begin in the fiscal year 2026, and its restructuring plan will be completed by the end of fiscal 2027.

It will incur pretax charges to its financial results of $300-$350 million, which would cover severance, one-time termination benefits, and site closure costs.
 

Amazon Sheds 660 New York Workers

Circling back to Amazon’s plan to drop 14,000 corporate workers, that plan has grown in number and is expected to hit around 30,000, courtesy of further reductions.

As a part of this initiative, the company is laying off 660 workers in New York City alone and spans nine offices, with its Hudson Yards office hitting 233 job losses and its 424 Fifth Avenue office cutting 182 jobs, as per a filing with the New York State Department of Labor.

“All employees whose roles were eliminated (including in New York) were notified that day [Oct. 28],” Amazon said in an emailed statement.

The layoffs come as the company looks to become more efficient.

“This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it's enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and altogether new ones),” Beth Galetti, SVP of People Experience and Technology at Amazon, said in a memo shared with employees at the end of October.

“We’re convinced that we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business.”

With the increasing number of layoffs in the tech sector, will this corporate lifestyle be the new normal?

Let us know in the comments below!