Which tech companies have laid off staff?

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Snap recently laid off about 20 percent of its employees and made the decision to cancel its original shows, in-app games, and other projects. It's just the latest tech company to slow hires, lay off significant percentages of staff, and halt formerly growing side ventures. Robinhood, Lyft, and more tech companies have made similar decisions this year.

Snap, like many other tech companies, enjoyed a thick 40 percent revenue growth until recently when, according to CEO Evan Spiegel, the company’s revenue growth flattened out in July and reaccelerated to 8 percent in August. 

"Unfortunately, given our current lower rate of revenue growth, it has become clear that we must reduce our cost structure to avoid incurring significant ongoing losses," Spiegel wrote in a company memo on Wednesday, according to The Verge. "While we have built substantial capital reserves, and have made extensive efforts to avoid reductions in the size of our team by reducing spend in other areas, we must now face the consequences of our lower revenue growth and adapt to the market environment."

Snap blamed a slowdown in marketing spend on Russia invading Ukraine, but the move is part of a larger trend in which tech companies cut staffing costs after a recent spike. According to Marketplace, that's in part because the pandemic created a huge demand for tech products and services, and that demand is beginning to slow.

"During the pandemic, the strong got stronger in tech," Dan Ives, the managing director at Wedbush Securities, told Marketplace. "From an e-commerce [perspective], everyone’s sitting at home streaming, to software, to cloud." 

And that's starting to change. J. P. Gownder, an analyst at the research firm Forrester told Marketplace many tech companies "legitimately have performance problems" while others "are simply being a little bit cautious and slowing things down."

According to Layoffs.fyi, a website tracking job cuts at startups and recently public companies, more than 37,000 positions were eliminated this year — compare that to just 3,000 by the same point in 2021. And, according to a 2022 survey, 42 percent of tech workers said they were recently laid off from their hybrid roles and 43 percent of respondents said that they were somewhat surprised to be dismissed, while just 14 percent said that their organization had announced the possibility of layoffs prior.

No matter which perspective you take, though, one thing is certain: 2022 has been the year of tech company layoffs.

SEE ALSO: Peloton gives 2,800 laid off employees a free 1-year subscription

Calm

The meditation and wellness app Calm laid off about 20 percent of its workforce, or 90 people, in August 2022, according to the Wall Street Journal.

"Regrettably, today we are reducing our overall workforce by 20 percent," Chief Executive David Ko said to employees in a memo, according to the Wall Street Journal. "While some of you will be impacted, all of you will be affected. I can assure you that this was not an easy decision, but it is especially difficult for a company like ours whose mission is focused on workplace mental health and wellness."

Groupon

The company laid off 15 percent of its workforce, or about 500 people, in August 2022, according to TechCrunch. The workers were primarily in merchant development, sales, recruiting, engineering, product, and marketing.

"Our overall business performance is not at the levels we anticipated and we are taking decisive actions to improve our trajectory," CEO Kedar Deshpande told TechCrunch. 

Robinhood

The financial services app laid off around 300 people in April and more than 700 more in August, according to a statement from Robinhood. In total, it's laid off about 30 percent of its workforce, or more than 1,000 people.

"While the decision to undertake this action wasn’t easy, it is a deliberate step to ensure we are able to continue delivering on our strategic goals and furthering our mission to democratize finance," CEO and co-founder Vlad Tenev said in a statement. "We will continue to accelerate our product momentum through 2022 and will introduce key new products across Brokerage, Crypto, and Spending/Saving. We will retain and continue to hire exceptional talent in key roles and provide additional learning and career growth opportunities for our employees. And of course, our international expansion efforts will continue to accelerate from here."

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OnlyFans

It's unclear exactly how many people OnlyFans laid off, but the layoffs certainly happened, according to an August story at Business Insider.

Change.org

Nick Allardice, the CEO of change.org, said the company decided to lay off employees "across all of our divisions and at every level, from entry level to executive." In total, Allardice laid off 19 percent of his staff.

"We are restructuring in order to double-down on providing this next generation of leaders with the infrastructure they need to build future movements," Allardice wrote in a statement. "While petitions will still be part of their toolkit, we’ll be going far beyond that by helping them generate sustainable income and mobilize their audiences across a range of actions and platforms."

Shopify

The e-commerce company laid off 10 percent of its employees, or 1,000 people, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Tobi Lütke, the company’s founder and chief executive, told staff in a memo obtained by the Wall Street Journal that the layoffs were necessary because, as people start shopping in person again, the online orders that made the company so profitable are beginning to slow.

Lyft

The rideshare company laid off two percent of its staff, or about 60 people, according to a Wall Street Journal report from July.

"Our road to scaling first party rentals is long and challenging with significant uncertainty," Cal Lankton, the vice president of fleet and global operations at Lyft, said in a memo obtained by the Wall Street Journal.

Vimeo

In July, the video-sharing platform laid off six percent of its employees, or about 72 people, according to Business Insider.

"Our leadership team has spent a lot of time looking at scenarios for how to best position Vimeo with the appropriate amount of financial flexibility during this period," Vimeo’s CEO Anjali Sud said in an email to Vimeo employees. "We slowed hiring, both at the start of the year and more recently, and have been actively evaluating and shifting our investments and expenses. And we committed to reassessing our financial position at the end of the quarter based on what we see."

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GoPuff

GoPuff laid off about three percent of its staff — more than 15,000 people — in March, and just a few months later it laid off ten percent of its remaining workforce, according to Bloomberg.

Microsoft

The company reportedly laid off about 200 people who predominantly work on winning back customers, according an August article at The Verge.

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Twitter

Twitter laid off about 30 percent of its recruiting team in July, according to the Wall Street Journal. The layoffs came as the company dealt with a potential Elon Musk takeover.

"I am overwhelmed; nervous and anxious but trying to stay optimistic of the future," a recruiter who was laid off from Twitter wrote on LinkedIn, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Stream

Stream laid off more than 10 percent of its employees in June, according to Pragmatic Engineer.

"As We have to be creative, grow with a smaller budget, and reduce how much we rely on external VC capital," the company's founder and CEO Thierry Schellenbach said in an email to the company, according to Pragmatic Engineer. "The goal is to reach profitability before we burn through the money raised in the B round."

Substack

The New York Times reported that Substack laid off 14 percent of its staff, or about 13 people, in June. Subtack’s chief executive Chriss Best told employees that the cuts predominantly affected human resources and writer support employees.

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Clubhouse

Do you remember the audio-first app that was all the rage for like one month during the early days of the pandemic? It's not doing so hot, and had to lay off an unclear number of people in June, according to Bloomberg.

SEE ALSO: Zuckerberg backtracks after Horizon Worlds backlash, claims Meta is 'capable of much more'

Zillow

Zillow's layoffs actually started in late 2021, but by January of this year. 2,000 people lost their jobs, or a fourth of the entire company according to Geek Wire.

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PayPal

PayPal laid off under one percent of its staff, about 83 people, in April, according to The Information.

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Netflix

The streaming service laid off about 150 people in May and another 300 in June, totaling four percent of its staff, or 450 people, according to Variety.

"Our slowing revenue growth means we are also having to slow our cost growth as a company," a Netflix representative told Variety in a statement. "So sadly, we are letting around 150 employees go today, mostly U.S.-based. These changes are primarily driven by business needs rather than individual performance, which makes them especially tough as none of us want to say goodbye to such great colleagues."

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