Amazon Severance Package 2026: The 90-Day Runway Decoded

Amazon Severance: Two Waves and a 90-Day Runway

Between late October 2025 and the end of January 2026, Amazon eliminated roughly 30,000 corporate roles, the largest corporate reduction in the company's history, bigger than the 27,000 cut across 2022–23. It arrived in two waves: approximately 14,000 roles announced on 28 October 2025 in a memo from Beth Galetti, Amazon's SVP of People eXperience and Technology, and roughly 16,000 more confirmed in late January 2026, landing alongside the closure of all 72 Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores. Galetti's framing was blunt: AI is "the most transformative technology we've seen since the Internet," and Amazon needs to be "organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership."

The money involved is visible in Amazon's own SEC filings, even though the package terms never have been: a $1.8 billion severance charge in the Q3 2025 earnings release, and roughly $2.7 billion for full-year 2025 in the 10-K filed in February 2026. Spread across ~30,000 announced roles, that works out to an average in the region of $90,000 per affected employee (our arithmetic from two filed figures, not a number Amazon has stated, and an average that blends everything from junior roles to Principal-level engineers).

What makes Amazon's package structurally different from a Google or Meta layoff isn't the severance formula. It's the mechanic in front of it: most affected US employees were given about 90 days on payroll to look for another role inside Amazon before their separation date. That runway, and whether one of Amazon's RSU vest dates happens to land inside it, can move the value of the total package more than the severance cheque itself. That's the lens this article uses.

The Short Answer

Amazon has never published its severance formula: not in the Galetti memos, not in any SEC filing (a full-text search of Amazon's EDGAR filings returns only aggregate charges and executive offer letters, never standard non-executive terms). The most consistent employee-reported description of the October 2025 and January 2026 offers, primarily from Blind threads by affected employees, is:

• A ~90-day paid, non-working notification period (system access cut quickly, pay and benefits continue through the separation date; Amazon's Washington WARN letter states it is "providing at least 90 days' notice" where federal law requires only 60)
• Then a lump sum estimated at 1 week of base pay per 6 months of service (≈2 weeks per year), reported floor of ~4 weeks and cap of ~20 weeks, conditioned on signing a separation agreement with a release of claims
• Plus a healthcare stipend and PTO payout (PTO payout depends on state law), and outplacement support

Treat every one of those figures as an employee-reported estimate, not a company-confirmed schedule. Reported floors have varied across rounds and sources (some earlier reporting suggested higher minimums, one aggregator reports a 3-week floor, and warehouse/hourly tiers are reported lower), and actual offers may come in above or below these ranges. What is company-confirmed is only the structure: 90 days to look internally, then "severance pay, outplacement services, health insurance benefits, and more."

For a $160,000 base salary (~$3,100/week), the reported formula sketches out roughly like this. These are illustrative estimates only, not statements of what any individual will receive, and packages vary in both directions:

| Tenure | Reported formula | Estimated lump sum | With ~13 weeks of runway pay | |---|---|---|---| | 2 years | 4 weeks (floor) | ~$12,000 | ~$52,000 | | 5 years | 10 weeks | ~$31,000 | ~$71,000 | | 8 years | 16 weeks | ~$49,000 | ~$89,000 | | 10+ years | 20 weeks (cap) | ~$62,000 | ~$102,000 |

The right-hand column is the honest way to read an Amazon package: the paid runway is worth more than the severance itself for shorter tenures.

The Two-Wave Timeline

Wave one: 28 October 2025. Reuters reported plans for cuts of up to 30,000 the evening before; Amazon confirmed ~14,000 the next morning. WARN filings the same day put primary-source numbers on it: ~2,303 employees in Washington State (separations staggered from 26 January into spring 2026), 1,540 across 41 California sites, and several hundred across Manhattan offices. Divisions reported hit include the video-games group (which Bloomberg described as gutted), PXT (Amazon's own HR org), devices and Alexa, advertising, Prime Video, and AWS. Business Insider reported that more than 78% of eliminated retail-division roles were held by L5–L7 managers, consistent with the "fewer layers" framing.

Wave two: late January 2026. Roughly 16,000 further corporate roles, alongside the closure of all 72 Go and Fresh stores (California's WARN report alone lists 3,855 store workers plus another 1,025 corporate roles for January). CNBC's analysis of four states' WARN filings found around 40% of the January cuts were engineers; wave two reached deeper into core technical roles than wave one.

Since then: quieter, not quiet. A May 2026 rumour of another 14,000-role round went viral and was flatly denied by Amazon ("false and not based in fact"). What has actually happened through mid-July 2026 is smaller, unannounced trimming (customer-service cuts in April, seller-support cuts in May), with no new billion-dollar severance charge in the Q1 2026 earnings release.

The 90-Day Runway

The runway is the piece most coverage under-weights. Federal WARN requires 60 days' notice for covered mass layoffs; Amazon's own WARN letter commits to "at least 90 days," and employee reports across both waves describe it as paid, non-working time: you're off the org chart but on payroll, with benefits, while you apply to internal roles. (In the 2023 round the equivalent window was 60 days for most US employees; the extension to ~90 is one of the few ways the 2025–26 package is better than its predecessor.)

Three practical consequences follow. First, total paid transition time for the October cohort ran to roughly 13 weeks of runway plus 4–20 weeks of severance: 17 to 33 weeks of pay in total under the reported terms, before anyone negotiates anything. Second, internal placement is a real alternative to the cheque: those who land another Amazon role keep their tenure and their unvested equity. Third, and this is the Amazon-specific part, RSUs that vest during the runway still vest, which turns the calendar into part of the package.

The RSU Cliff and the Vest-Date Lottery

Amazon's new-hire equity vests over four years on the famously back-loaded schedule commonly cited as 5% / 15% / 40% / 40%, a figure that appears in offer letters and advisor guides but that Amazon itself has never published, and one that is actively changing: the FY2025 10-K says most awards now "primarily vest quarterly in the relevant compensation year," and advisor guides describe many employees moving to more frequent vesting. Sign-on cash (usually paid in monthly instalments across years one and two) bridges the low-equity early years, and reports from layoff cohorts indicate instalment-paid sign-ons simply stop rather than being clawed back.

The consequences at separation are stark. Unvested RSUs are forfeited (no acceleration has been reported in any Amazon layoff round from 2022 through 2026), and Amazon's 10-K shows 35.4 million RSUs forfeited in 2025 across all attrition. The one cushion is the runway: vest dates that land inside those ~90 days still pay out.

That is where the calendar becomes a lottery. Amazon's traditional vest dates fall on 15 May and 15 November. The October 2025 cohort was notified on 28 October with separations from 26 January 2026, so the 15 November vest landed inside the window and vested. The January 2026 cohort's Washington separations were filed for 28 April 2026: about two and a half weeks before the 15 May vest. (That juxtaposition is our arithmetic from the WARN dates and the commonly-cited vest calendar, not something Amazon or any outlet has stated, and vest schedules vary by grant.) Two employees with identical tenure and salary, cut ninety days apart, could see materially different equity outcomes for reasons that have nothing to do with either of them.

For anyone modelling their own number: your unvested position and next vest date are in your equity portal, and how close that date sits to your separation date is worth understanding precisely before you respond to anything.

Pivot: Severance Without a Layoff

Amazon also pays severance outside layoff rounds, through its performance-management pipeline, and it works differently. Employees flagged into the coaching stage ("Focus"), and then into "Pivot," face a documented three-door choice: leave with a severance package in exchange for signing a release, enter a formal PIP, or (after a failed PIP) appeal to an internal panel of peers. Business Insider's reporting on leaked documents describes the economic gradient plainly: the offer shrinks at each stage. The initial take-it-and-leave package is the largest, the post-PIP-failure offer smaller, and the package after a lost appeal slimmer still. No public formula exists for Pivot severance or how it compares to layoff severance.

One caveat worth knowing before choosing a door: attorney commentary suggests taking a voluntary Pivot exit can complicate unemployment-benefit eligibility in some states, since it may be treated as a resignation. That's a state-specific question with real money attached, the kind of specific-facts question a licensed employment attorney in your state can actually answer, and this article can't.

The Release, the 45-Day Window, and WARN

The lump sum is conditioned on signing a separation agreement that includes a release of claims. For workers 40 and over in a group termination programme, federal law (the OWBPA, 29 U.S.C. § 626(f)) sets minimum windows: at least 45 days to consider the agreement (21 for individual separations), 7 days to revoke after signing, plus a written disclosure of the ages and job titles of who was selected. Those are general statutory facts, not Amazon-specific terms; whether and how Amazon's 2025–26 agreements applied them hasn't been publicly confirmed.

Two related notes. Amazon's 90-day notice exceeds federal WARN's 60-day minimum. How that bears on any individual's situation is a question for counsel, and plaintiff-side firms have opened investigations into WARN compliance for the 2025–26 rounds (investigations only; no filed class action had been confirmed as of this writing). And severance generally interacts with unemployment benefits differently by state and payment structure; our guide to severance and unemployment covers the general mechanics.

Benefits Beyond Cash

Beyond the lump sum, employee reports and company statements describe: a healthcare stipend (2023-era reporting described transitional medical coverage of up to several months; 2025–26 reports describe a stipend whose duration isn't publicly settled; neither is company-confirmed), outplacement/job-placement services, and PTO payout where state law or policy provides it (mandatory in states like California; policy-dependent in Washington). Sign-on bonus repayment was reportedly waived in the 2023 round and instalment-paid sign-ons in later rounds simply stop accruing.

Negotiation Angles for Amazon Employees

Amazon's scale and standardisation mean individual severance negotiation is reportedly harder than at smaller employers, but published reports and adviser commentary point to factors many people examine before signing:

• The vest-date gap. Where a vest date falls shortly after the separation date, some people ask whether the separation date can be aligned with it, or raise the gap's value in discussions. There are no published reports of Amazon accelerating equity, but the size of the gap is a fact worth quantifying either way.
• The internal-placement window. The 90 days is usable time; internal placement preserves tenure and unvested equity entirely, which for years-3-and-4 employees can be worth multiples of the severance.
• Healthcare-stipend duration and COBRA transition: a common discussion point given the stipend's terms aren't published.
• The review windows. Many people 40+ use the statutory 21/45-day consideration period to have an employment lawyer review the release, the selection disclosures, and any non-compete or non-solicit terms before signing. Whether to sign, and when, is a decision only you can make, ideally with advice this article deliberately doesn't provide.

The Bottom Line

An Amazon package in 2025–26 is three stacked components: ~90 days of paid runway (company-confirmed), an employee-reported lump sum of roughly a week per six months of service between ~4 and ~20 weeks (never company-confirmed), and an equity outcome decided largely by where your vest dates fall relative to your separation date. The first component is the most certain, the last is frequently the largest, and the middle one (the number everyone fixates on) is often the smallest of the three.

This article is a guide, not legal advice. Every figure above is an estimate drawn from the sources described, actual packages vary in both directions, and Amazon has confirmed none of the formulas. If you're weighing a Pivot door, a release with material unvested equity at stake, or a WARN-adjacent situation, a licensed employment attorney in your state can review the specifics.

For a starting-point estimate of what the reported formula sketches for your salary and tenure, see the Amazon severance page and the free severance calculator; both produce illustrative estimates, not final figures.