The email says the layoffs will "help focus" the org. What crazy battered wife reasoning is this?
It’s not reasoning. It’s one of the standard canned excuses so they don’t have to say out loud that they’re just chasing quarterly profit numbers at the expense of all else.
This seems to be the week for retrenchment in Bezos World. The Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go stores are closing, The Washington Post is laying off half of its foreign correspondents, and the Post was planning to send nobody to the Winter Olympics but reversed that decision.
It's all a part of focusing on their core business, like… paying an $28M bribe to Melania Trump.