Bezos’ “two pizzas” were evaluated: at Amazon, internal correspondence was filled with memes against the background of new layoffs – media

The next round of layoffs at Amazon is expected, and employees are sharing humorous images in the internal Slack platform. Humor is based on the “principle of two pizzas” Jeff Bezos, which is used to demonstrate the decrease in the number of people in groups.

Amazon is expected to make another round of corporate layoffs, and workers are exchanging downsizing memes in an internal Slack channel. The humorous materials are based on the “two pizza rule” from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Business Insider reports UNN.

Details “Amazon employees are doing what employees at big tech firms often do when they’re worried about layoffs: They’re creating memes,” the article says.

As Business Insider reported on Thursday, citing sources familiar with the situation, the company is expected to cut thousands more corporate positions as early as next week. The upcoming phase will be another wave of massive cuts at Amazon, just months after nearly 14,000 jobs were eliminated in October.

In the absence of official company-wide announcements, employees have been trying to lighten the tense atmosphere in an internal Slack channel that has more than 26,000 people joining it by posting memes and jokes that were seen by Business Insider.

At the heart of their irony is Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos’ famous “two-pizza rule,” originally designed to keep meetings short and productive. The rule was simple: never hold a meeting where two pizzas are not enough for everyone present.

As the company continues to downsize, employees are using the same logic to show how much smaller their teams will become.

One meme depicted a thin slice of pizza with the inscription “how we feed two pizza teams”.

Another image featured two pizza boxes with the Amazon Web Services logo and the caption “did someone say two pizza team?” (did someone say 2 pizza team?). This meme is an allusion to the cloud division of the company, where a significant number of cuts are expected, the publication writes.

“I don’t think I’ve ever worked in a group that could be completely fed with just two regular-sized pizzas so no one went hungry while still being very frugal,” wrote one employee in a Slack channel. “Increasing the ‘span of control’ for managers seems to be the new trend.”

Pizza jokes weren’t the only way to cope. Workers also shared memes unrelated to pizza.

Addition Amazon isn’t the only tech giant where excited employees mock the company’s internal culture. In 2023, Google employees flooded the company’s internal forums with memes mocking its expensive developer conference, which took place a few months after 12,000 workers were laid off.