The local consequences of AWS’ global reshuffle

For all the hype around Big Tech being the best employers in town, it may not be the best time to be at Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing arm of the American e-commerce giant.  

For nine months now, AWS India has functioned without a country head after Puneet Chandok, who held the position for six years, joined arch-rival Microsoft in September 2023. Vaishali Kasture, a senior executive at AWS, was given interim charge after Chandoks’s exit. A level-eight executive in the organisational hierarchy (Chandok was a level-ten executive, with there being no level nine), Kasture was denied elevation to level ten, three senior company executives said. She quit in December. 

These departures came even as AWS India’s growth rate was already tapering as it faces unprecedented competition from Microsoft. The latter appears to be riding the generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) wave, with the largest companies globally and in India flocking to it as they experiment with implementing AI. AWS India laid off hundreds of executives in India in 2023 and then again in April 2024.  

All this is set against the backdrop of a global reorg at AWS, which is merging its two largest teams—commercial and public sector—and placing the combined unit under the ambit of its respective country leaders. Believed to be the brainchild of CEO Matt Garman, an AWS veteran who replaced his predecessor Adam Selipsky on 3 June, the reorg is being carried out across AWS market countries except the five eyes—Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and United States. 

The reorg, announced late last year and finally enacted this January, has seen the company do away with its existing team structures, dividing them into five industry verticals—telecom, media, gametech; conglomerates; financial services; global system integrators and public sector. Top-to-mid-level executives have been reassigned to these new business units, with the scope of several managerial and leadership roles being seriously curtailed. The team heads will report to the country leader as and when the position is filled.