Bezos Seeks Penance After Amazon Layoffs by Donating his Wealth

Jeff Bezos donates his wealth as a repentance for the mass Amazon layoffs of 10k employees

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will donate most of his wealth to charities that focus on climate change and social and political discrimination. As per Forbes, Bezos is currently the world's 4th richest man with a net worth of $124 billion. In an exclusive interview with CNN, Bezos and his partner, journalist-turned-philanthropist Lauren Sánchez, said they intend to donate the majority of his wealth within his lifetime and currently the couple is "building the capacity to be able to give away this money."

The biggest challenge for them right now is to decide how to distribute his vast fortune.

"The hard part is figuring out how to do it in a levered way," he said and further hints that though he intends to give away most part of his wealth, he is still looking at ways to maximize profit in business. "It's not easy. Building Amazon was not easy. It took a lot of hard work, a bunch of very smart teammates, hard-working teammates, and I'm finding — and I think Lauren is finding the same thing — that charity, philanthropy are very similar."

"There are a bunch of ways that I think you could do ineffective things, too," he added. "So you have to think about it carefully and you have to have brilliant people on the team."

He, however, denied identifying how and where and how much percentage of his money will be spent. Bezos has committed $10 billion over 10 years, or about 8% of his current net worth, to the Bezos Earth Fund, which Sánchez co-chairs. Among its priorities are reducing the carbon footprint of construction-grade cement and steel; pushing financial regulators to consider climate-related risks; advancing data and mapping technologies to monitor carbon emissions; and building natural, plant-based carbon sinks on a large scale, the CNN report cited. This was the first time Bezos and Sánchez agreed to their first interview together since they began dating in 2019. Earlier, Bezos has been highly criticized for not signing the Giving Pledge, a promise by hundreds of the world's richest people to donate the majority of their wealth to charitable causes.

Laying off around 10,000 people would actually mean dismissing roughly three percent of Amazon's corporate employees and less than one percent of its global workforce of more than 1.5 million, which mainly consists of hourly workers. This planned retrenchment comes during the holiday season, a time when the company has valued stability in the past years. This shows how the souring global economy has pushed Amazon to trim business.

Ironically, just a few months back the e-commerce giant more than doubled the cap on cash compensation for its tech workers, in a bid to retain its employees in a competitive labor market. The changing business models and the looming recession in the global economy have triggered layoffs across tech companies. From April-September, the company reduced its headcount by almost 80,000 people, primarily reducing its hourly staff through high attrition. Recently, Amazon closed its Amazon Care, which provided primary and urgent health care services. It also shut Scout, the cooler-size home delivery robot and Fabric.com