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Amazon Echo Dot speaker
CNBC | Richard Washington
Amazon has misplaced two high-profile executives who helped oversee the corporate’s {hardware} efforts.
Gregg Zehr, president of Amazon’s {hardware} analysis and growth group, referred to as Lab126, has retired, the corporate confirmed to CNBC. Zehr is credited with inventing the vastly profitable Kindle e-reader.
Tom Taylor, senior vp of Amazon Alexa and a member of CEO Andy Jassy’s elite S-Group, can be retiring, Amazon mentioned. Each Taylor and Zehr spent nicely over a decade on the firm.
“We’ve got sturdy succession plans for all companies, and each these positions had been backfilled with sturdy inside leaders a while in the past,” an Amazon spokesperson mentioned in a press release.
Business Insider earlier reported on Zehr and Taylor’s departures.
For Jassy, it marks the most recent high-profile exits at a time when Amazon is staring down a large number of challenges, from hovering inflation to slowing gross sales. Heather MacDougall, Amazon’s office well being and security chief, departed the corporate in September. In July, public coverage chief Jay Carney left to hitch Airbnb, and 23-year Amazon veteran Dave Clark resigned as retail chief a month later.
Two outstanding Black leaders — operations government Dave Bozeman and Alicia Boler-Davis, senior vp of worldwide buyer success — additionally announced their departures in June.
Amazon mentioned it nonetheless maintains excessive retention charges. The common tenure for vice presidents is about 10 years, and for senior vice presidents it’s “for much longer,” the spokesperson mentioned.
The manager exodus additionally comes as Jassy has been reining in spending throughout the corporate. Amazon has carried out a hiring freeze for company retail roles and has discontinued plenty of initiatives in latest months, starting from its Care telehealth service to its Glow video-calling projector.
