Amazon announced they are letting go of hundreds of employees based out of the Seattle headquarters. The cuts come following a massive eight-year hiring spree, which grew the company from 5,000 employees to 40,000 at its headquarters.

According to the Seattle Times, some departments faced being over budget and having too many staff on its payroll. Over the last few months, Amazon started hiring freezes to slow the number of new hires.

While most of the cuts will be out of Amazon's Seattle headquarter's but are also cutting employees from its retail stores including the Las Vegas online footwear business Zappos, which recently slashed 30 jobs.

Overspending is leading Amazon to cut jobs

The move comes as the company attempts to control spending and consolidate some of its business. Companies large as Amazon are known to cut hundreds of employees and Amazon's cuts are pretty small to other large companies including Microsoft. Last year Microsoft laid off several thousands of employees, most were based outside of the United States.

Still cutting jobs but Amazon is still looking for workers

Currently, the company has over 4,000 job listings on its website for the local office.

The industry giant appears to not be looking to reduce the overall employee numbers. According to CNN, Amazon has added 130,000 jobs in the last year, not including their recent purchase of Whole Foods. Their global workforce has increased 66 percent since last year. Amazon has also said it would hire 50,000 people for its second headquarters.

The cuts come as Amazon continues to locate a location for its second headquarters. According to CNN, Amazon's top brass wanted to put the pressure on management to eliminate low performing employees. Along with the cuts, Amazon has now mandated that employees who are responsible for other supervisors, must also have four employees reporting to them.

Amazon says this is to eliminate redundant management and keep the company fast-paced.

Many of the job openings are for departments that have rising profits like Amazon Web Services and the department responsible for voice controlled computing like Alexa. Amazon is looking to make Alexa a part of their consumers' lives and increase shopping orders. Some employees have been notified, while others will be notified later in the week. Amazon has said that those being cut are being given the option to be assigned to a different division in the company that is growing.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED