“We always said it was like a start-up,” Mr. Anderson wrote, “with zero risk if you failed.”The layoffs, which totaled about 18,000 across Amazon, came with a hiring freeze, limiting options for movement internally. Numerous employees of the company wrote Mr. Anderson that his post had hit a nerve. They told him that they hoped to switch roles internally, he said, and were “never working on one of these crazy projects again.”Still, employees remain excited to work on Amazon’s big bets, including satellite internet, health care and driverless taxis, said Brad Glasser, a company spokesman.“The opportunity to work on projects that are transformative for customers at scale and to …
