LinkedIn cuts 668 jobs across engineering, finance teams

Professional networking platform LinkedIn has announced that it will be slashing 668 jobs across  engineering, product, talent, and finance teams. Earlier in May, the Microsoft-owned company said that it would close its Chinese jobs app which led to the loss of 716 roles.

The latest layoffs were announced on October 16, where the company noted in its blog, “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.”

Microsoft bought LinkedIn in 2016 through a deal worth $26.2 billion. Since the acquisition, the company said its revenue from LinkedIn grew by 5% in the quarter ending June 30. For the next quarter, the company has forecasted growth in the low to mid-single digits range. 

Like LinkedIn, parent Microsoft has also announced several trims to its workforce. Earlier this year, the software giant fired 10,000 employees. As part of the layoff, Microsoft fired its entire ethics and society team within the AI organisation. 

Another Microsoft-owned company GitHub laid off the entire engineering team from its India branch, affecting at least 100 employees in March. 

“As part of the reorganisation plan shared in February, workforce reductions were made today as part of difficult but necessary decisions and realignments to both protect the health of our business in the short term and grant us the capacity to invest in our long-term strategy moving forward,” GitHub’s spokesperson said then. The news came a month after GitHub laid off 10% of its staff and adopted a completely remote working mode. At that time, the company also said that it will continue the hiring freeze (announced first in January), and make other changes to protect the ‘short-term health’ of the company.