Following yesterday’s new of huge layoffs at the Comixology division of Amazon, additional data confirms that calling it the “Comixology bloodbath” is unfortunately correct: practically everybody at the division has been let go, and people remaining are solely there on “mop up” responsibility.
A subsequent tweet from Comixology worker “Scott” confirmed that 75% of the workers had been laid off.
UPDATE:
Closer to 75%.
The majority of the workers are gone.
There’s nonetheless workers working at Comixology. I’ve no data to share about what they’re engaged on, or the size of their tenure.#Comixology https://t.co/vxW3X6BqSp
— Scott (@CocktailsAndInk) January 19, 2023
Other sources near remaining workers inside Comixology have reached out to the Beat to verify this and provides an excellent clearer image of the dismantling of the workers of what was as soon as the premiere digital comics app.
According to these insiders, all of the jobs at Comixology have been eradicated, and the total division was laid off in three components, some instantly (yesterday), some slated to go away in June after fulfilling remaining obligations to publishers, and a closing group that may keep on till October to mop up the migration from the authentic Comixology website.
Remaining workers questions whether or not all of the technical work could be accomplished with such a skeleton workers, however we’ve all heard that story in tech earlier than.
While that is all brutally devastating to the enterprise, I’m instructed the layoffs are, usually talking, a part of the bigger Amazon workers reductions which noticed 18,000 folks lose their jobs this week. And as tech website Recode reported, Comixology will not be the solely Amazon division to be gutted; Smile, a well-liked charity mission, was additionally eradicated as have been varied different divisions, and the large faces many points.
Since then, founder Jeff Bezos stepped down and named a brand new CEO, the on-line purchasing increase slowed, and Amazon needed to dig itself out of a pricey and overly aggressive warehouse and staffing enlargement. The previous two months have been a wierd, even scary, time inside the firm, present and former workers instructed Recode: Amazon introduced unprecedented layoffs of greater than 18,000 company workers and started culling areas of the enterprise, like its Alexa voice assistant division, that Bezos had lengthy championed.
The Recode piece by Jason Del Rey is a should learn for a way even the greatest can mess it up. While Amazon gross sales soared to ridiculous heights throughout pandemic lockdown purchases, they predictably slowed afterwards, however Amazon invested an excessive amount of in brick and mortar infrastructure like warehouses and e-book shops that (satirically) couldn’t compete with present bookstores.
Still, the Comixology scenario is exclusive. Insiders have been apprehensive about whether or not the platform would survive as a separate id after the migration from the standalone website to the predominant Amazon website started, as introduced late in 2021. Even so, the suddenness of the shutdown got here as a shock.
The outpouring of emotion from Comixology workers and the wider comics group was was throughout Twitter. Like “Scott,” above, this CX worker was elegiac about the ardour the workers had for the mission over time:
The finish of Comixology as its personal enterprise unit with devoted workers, leaves many questions going ahead about the way forward for digital comics and publishing. But we’ll be analyzing these in a second publish.
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