More Stack Overflow Layoffs
Prashanth Chandrasekar (Hacker News):
This is why we have been so focused on our path to profitability, even as we commit to the continued product innovation of Stack Overflow for Teams and the health of the public platform by building out our AI/ML capabilities. This year we took many steps to spend less. Changes have been pursued through the lens of minimizing impact to the lives of Stackers. Unfortunately, those changes were not enough and we have made the extremely difficult decision to reduce the company’s headcount by approximately 28%.
As we finish this fiscal year and move into the next, we are focused on investing in our product. As such, we are significantly reducing the size of our go-to-market organization while we do so. Supporting teams and other teams across the organization are impacted as well. As I mentioned, our focus for this fiscal year and into the next is profitability and that, along with macroeconomic pressures led to today’s changes.
After the team doubled its employee base last year, Chandrasekar told The Verge’s Nilay Patel in an interview that about 45 percent of those hires were for its go-to-market sales team, which he said was “obviously the largest team.”
The data show that 1,059 tech companies have laid off 240,193 employees thus far in 2023. Last year, 1,024 tech companies laid off a total of 154,336 employees, according to Layoffs.fyi.
Previously:
Update (2023-10-27): Ayana Archie (Hacker News):
The Microsoft-owned social media platform LinkedIn is laying off nearly 700 employees, it said in a statement Monday.
About 668 positions across the company’s engineering, product, talent and finance departments will be eliminated. The announcement comes after the company said in May it was laying off 716 employees.
Waymo, the robotaxi company whose presence has expanded across San Francisco in recent months, has slashed jobs for the third time this year.
Update (2023-11-20): Sophie McEvoy (via Hacker News):
Unity has released its financial results for the three months ended September 30, 2023, announcing layoffs despite a significant growth in revenue and a drop in overall net loss.
Previously:
Update (2023-11-22): Victoria Song:
Bungie is laying off around 100 staffers as well as delaying two of its forthcoming titles: Marathon and Destiny 2’s forthcoming expansion, The Final Shape. The latter is now expected to launch in June 2024, while the former won’t be expected until 2025.
The layoffs, first reported by Bloomberg, are part of ongoing cuts within Sony’s PlayStation division.
