LinkedIn announced another round of layoffs on 16th Oct 2023, affecting approximately 668 roles across our engineering, product, talent, and finance teams.
These latest job cuts on the professional social networking platform follow the company's ongoing slow year-over-year revenue growth for eight consecutive quarters.
According to Microsoft's quarterly revenue report released in July, the company has been experiencing sluggish revenue growth, with just a 5 percent increase in the second quarter.
This is despite the fact that its membership has been consistently growing every quarter for the past two years. In order to boost revenue, Microsoft has stated that it will focus on improving its operations and prioritise key initiatives. These recent LinkedIn layoffs align with the company's plan for FY 24.
“Talent changes are a difficult, but necessary and regular part of managing our business. The changes we shared with our team today will result in a reduction of approximately 668 roles across our engineering, product, talent and finance teams,” said linkedIn in its official blog post.
Microsoft's latest layoffs at LinkedIn are part of a broader trend of job cuts in the tech sector, as companies grapple with slowing revenue growth and an uncertain economic outlook.
The layoffs at LinkedIn, which represent 3 per cent of the company's workforce, come in addition to the 10,000 job cuts that Microsoft announced in January and July.
The company's overall revenue growth has slipped in recent months, pushing CEO Satya Nadella to lower costs across the company and prioritise revenue.
In an official memo viewed by CNBC, LinkedIn’s executives Mohak Shroff and Tomer Cohen wrote, As we continue to execute on our FY24 plan, we need to also evolve how we work and what we prioritise so we can deliver on the key initiatives we’ve identified that will have an outsized impact in achieving our business goalsâ€æ..
This means adapting our organisational structures to improve agility and accountability, establishing unambiguous ownership and driving improved efficiency and transparency through reduced layering.
Meanwhile, amid layoffs, LinkedIn is reportedly ramping up hiring in India, according to a person familiar with the matter. "While we are adapting our organisational structures and streamlining our decision making, we are continuing to invest in strategic priorities for our future and to ensure we continue to deliver value for our members and customers," LinkedIn added in its blog post.
Notably, the tech sector has seen a wave of layoffs in recent months, with tens of thousands of workers losing their jobs. Companies like Amazon, Meta, and Google have all announced job cuts, as they brace for a potential recession.
According to a report by employment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, tech sector has laid off 141,516 employees in the first half of 2023 compared with about 6,000 a year ago.
