LinkedIn Announces Additional Layoffs

TechCrunch reported today that LinkedIn will lay off 668 employees. According to what TechCrunch said is "a reliable source," approximately 563 roles will be eliminated from LinkedIn's R&D department and the rest spread across engineering, product, talent and finance.

The cuts come five months after LinkedIn announced 716 job cuts as it phased out its app in China. All told, LinkedIn has laid off 1,384 people so far this year.

“While we are adapting our organizational 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,” the company said in a statement. “We are committed to providing our full support to all impacted employees during this transition and ensuring that they are treated with care and respect.”

It didn’t specify which strategic priorities it would focus on, but AI is a pretty safe bet.

“We continue to use AI to help our members and customers connect to opportunities and tap into the experiences of experts on the platform. Our AI-powered collaborative articles are now the fastest-growing traffic driver to LinkedIn,” the company said. 

Tech Industry Layoffs

Cisco, MariaDB and SecureWorks all recently announced layoffs. Google also announced it would lay off hundreds of employees, delivering the news on Wednesday, September 13. Other mass layoffs recently in the Bay Area included Intel, Wish and LinkedIn.

At the beginning of September, Rapid7 announced a restructuring plan following disappointing second-quarter results, resulting in the layoffs of about 18% of the company’s workforce.

Similarly, AppSec firm Snyk laid off 128 people in April. Cloud security vendor Zscaler announced layoffs after what it called a rough fiscal second quarter. Software tools giant Atlassian laid off 5% of its workforce as it “shifted priorities.” 

Accenture announced yet another round of layoffs in Austin last week, after axing 19,000 jobs, and Veeam laid off 3.8% of its workforce in August.

Oxford, U.K.-based platform security vendor Sophos in January laid off 10% of its staff, or 450 workers while San Francisco-based identity security giant Okta axed 5% of its workers – or roughly 300 employees in February.

Layoffs.fyi, a website that has documented tech company layoffs since the COVID-19 pandemic began, reported that approximately 242,000 employees have been laid off thus far in 2023.