Tag: tech layoffs

Categories
Mobile Syrup

Toronto-based Wattpad lays off 16 percent of its workforce

Online writing platform Wattpad has laid off 42 employees.

The Toronto-based organization lets users write original stories that others can read.

The team had 267 members before the company’s interim president, KB Nam, announced layoff details in a blog post on March 8th. Wattpad blames the changes on difficult economic conditions.

“The global economic reality over the past year has fundamentally changed — and like other businesses, we are not immune,” Nam wrote. “After nearly doubling the size of our teams, it’s now clear that we need to recalibrate based on our current business needs and realities.”

Nam says the company will support impacted employees as it continues to focus on its users. “Practically speaking, going forward, this means we are going to be relentlessly focused on serving the needs of our writers.”

Wattpad isn’t the only company laying off employees. Meta will soon proceed with its own round of layoffs. Google, Spotify, and Twitter are the many other companies that laid off employees in the past months.

Image credit: Shutterstock 

Source: Wattpad

Categories
Mobile Syrup

Spotify announces layoffs in bid to cut costs

Spotify is laying off six percent of its workforce.

The figure was hidden deep in a lengthy letter from CEO Daniel Ek outlining structural reorganizations and the need to cut costs.

Ek says the company’s operating expenses “outpaced our revenue growth by 2X” last year. Spotify has made other efforts to cut costs, the CEO said, but those alone weren’t enough.

“Like many other leaders, I hoped to sustain the strong tailwinds from the pandemic and believed that our broad global business and lower risk to the impact of a slowdown in ads would insulate us,” Ek wrote. “In hindsight, I was too ambitious in investing ahead of our revenue growth.”

Spotify is the latest tech company to announce layoffs. Google laid off 12,000 employees last week, following Microsoft and Meta’s steps.

In other changes, the company will move most of its engineering and product work under its Chief Product Officer and its business aspects under the Chief Business Officer.

Despite the changes, Ek hints that innovations are in store for 2023. Spotify will likely share more details at its Stream On event in March.

Source: Spotify

Categories
Mobile Syrup

Amazon to lay off 10,000 employees, NYT reports

Amazon will implement the most significant job cuts in the company’s history.

According to the New York Times, the company will lay off as many as 10,000 employees, possibly beginning this week. However, that figure could fluctuate, employees familiar with the matter anonymously told the publication.

The employees work on Amazon’s devices, including Alexa, retail, and human resources.

The news comes just around the holiday season, a significant time for Amazon, which recently released some early Black Friday deals.

Amazon isn’t the only tech company to issue layoffs. Last week, Meta announced its most extensive layoffs, citing a changing landscape. More recently, contracted Twitter employees around the world, many of which were responsible for content moderation were let go.

Amazon didn’t confirm the news.

Source: New York Times