Amazon employees are leaning on humor as uncertainty builds inside the company. With reports pointing to another round of corporate layoffs, memes have become a coping mechanism across internal Slack channels.
According to multiple reports, Amazon may cut thousands of corporate roles as early as next week. The potential move follows October’s layoffs, when the company eliminated roughly 14,000 positions. So far, Amazon has not issued a company-wide update. In the absence of clarity, employees have filled the gap with jokes, sarcasm, and shared anxiety.
Pizza memes reflect shrinking teams
Much of the humor centres on Jeff Bezos’ “two-pizza rule”, the long-standing idea that teams should be small enough to be fed by two pizzas.
Employees have reworked the phrase to reflect leaner teams and heavier workloads. Memes show comically tiny pizza slices, with captions questioning how “two-pizza teams” function when headcount keeps shrinking.
Others debate whether oversized pizzas from chains like Domino’s or Costco might still qualify, poking fun at how flexible corporate logic can become during cost-cutting phases.
Workload jokes hide deeper concerns
Beyond pizza jokes, employees have shared memes about expanding responsibilities, wider managerial spans, and the fear of sudden system lockouts.
Some posts reference the moment an employee loses access to email or Slack without warning, a scenario many now associate with layoffs. Others mock corporate language around “nimbleness,” a term CEO Andy Jassy has previously used when discussing efficiency and cost discipline.
A significant portion of the humor focuses on Amazon Web Services, where workers expect a large share of the cuts to land.
Silence fuels speculation
So far, Amazon has declined to comment publicly on the reports. That silence has only amplified speculation internally.
Similar scenes have played out across the tech sector in recent years. At several major companies, employees have turned to memes and dark humor during periods of restructuring, using shared jokes to manage stress when official communication lags.
For now, Amazon employees wait. Until clearer answers arrive, memes remain one of the few outlets for releasing tension inside the company’s virtual halls.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.Jordan Strauss/AP
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