Layoffs continue to mount in the tech sector as the first week of February comes to a close. As of (March 08, 2024), some well-known companies are among those to announce significant job cuts. Those layoffs have now accounted for 33,874 job losses in the industry since the start of the new year, according to tech layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Here are the latest big-name tech companies to announce cuts.
Grammarly
On Wednesday, the popular spell- and grammar-checking tools company announced it is laying off about 230 employees worldwide. In a letter to employees, Grammarly CEO Rahul Roy-Chowdhury said the layoffs were not part of a cost-cutting measure. Rather, the layoffs were due to the rise and importance of AI.
“To arrive at today’s decision, we took a look at our organizational design and the current skillsets of our teams through the lens of our company strategy,” Roy-Chowdhury wrote. “As we strengthen our focus toward driving the AI-enabled workplace and deepen our technical investments in AI, we will need a different mix of capabilities and skillsets.”
Grammarly says it had 1,000 employees before the layoffs. Those let go accounted for roughly 23% of its workforce.
DocuSign
On Tuesday, the popular e-signature company announced a restructuring plan that will see 6% of its workforce laid off. Most of those layoffs will affect DocuSign’s Sales & Marketing organizations. As CNBC noted, DocuSign’s most recent Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing stated that the company had 7,336 workers. A 6% layoff will thus total about 440 jobs.
DocuSign said its restructuring plan is “designed to strengthen and support the Company’s financial and operational efficiency.”
Amazon
Amazon has been no stranger to layoffs for more than a year now. The company has previously made some of the largest job cuts in the tech industry. Last month, Amazon laid off hundreds from its Twitch and Prime Video departments.
This month Amazon is cutting jobs in its One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy units. Amazon confirmed the cuts to Business Insider, saying they will amount to a “few hundred roles” eliminated. One source told the publication that up to 400 jobs could go.
“As we continue our mission to make health care simpler for customers, we’re realigning some resources to help accelerate our efforts to deliver the best experience for our patients, customers, and members,” Amazon Health Services senior vice president Neil Lindsay said in a statement. “Unfortunately, these adjustments will result in the elimination of a few hundred roles within Amazon Pharmacy and One Medical. We’re grateful to these team members for their contributions, and we will support them in their next steps.”
Snap
Snapchat owner Snap on Monday said it would lay off around 528 employees, or about 10% of its global workforce, as it struggles with ad revenue growth that is weaker than the growth enjoyed by its biggest rivals, including Google and Meta.
“In order to best position our business to execute on our highest priorities, and to ensure we have the capacity to invest incrementally to support our growth over time, we have made the difficult decision to restructure our team,” the company said.
A day following the layoffs, Snap announced its Q4 results, which saw revenue that did not meet Wall Street expectations. (March 08, 2024), the company’s shares plummeted more than 32% in premarket trading.
Meetup
In January, Evernote-maker Bending Spoons announced it would acquire community building platform Meetup. However, on Monday, Bending Spoons CEO Luca Ferrari announced that that acquisition will now lead to layoffs. That’s because Bending Spoons is moving Meetup’s base of operations from the United States to Europe, where Bending Spoons is based.
“Regrettably, moving Meetup’s operations to our home turf in Europe means significantly reducing the size of the US-based team. We’ve now communicated to the whole Meetup staff that a layoff is taking place that will impact many of them,” Ferrari wrote in a blog post.
Ferrari did not say exactly how many jobs would be lost.
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