LinkedIn Cutting 668 Jobs Despite Positive Q4 Earnings -- Redmondmag.com

LinkedIn Cutting 668 Jobs Despite Positive Q4 Earnings

The reductions mostly affected LinkedIn's engineering organization.

By Kurt Mackie
10/16/2023

The LinkedIn careers site, owned by Microsoft, announced personnel cuts of "approximately 668 roles" on Monday.

The personnel cuts extend across "engineering, product, talent and finance teams," and are being done to streamline the organization and deliver future value to LinkedIn members and customers, according a LinkedIn press release. LinkedIn pointed to Microsoft's Q4 earnings report for more details, although LinkedIn's Q4 stats were fairly positive in that report.

Per highlights from the Q4 Microsoft earnings, LinkedIn delivered a 5% year-over-year revenue increase, and its revenue "surpassed $15 billion for the first time this fiscal year." LinkedIn membership "has now accelerated for eight quarters in a row" (it has "more than 940 million members"). Even the LinkedIn Talent Solutions group, subject to the newly announced job cuts, performed well, exceeding "$7 billion in revenue for the first time over the past 12 months."

LinkedIn's job cuts also are occurring when the general U.S. unemployment rate is relatively low at 3.8 percent, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics September findings. Also, "the number of unemployed persons was essentially unchanged at 6.4 million," the bureau added.

The LinkedIn job cuts mostly affected its engineering organization, according to a CNBC report, citing a LinkedIn memo it viewed. That memo also described the motivations for the cuts as improving efficiency and transparency "through reduced layering." These new LinkedIn cuts were not part of the 10,000-personnel job cuts announced by Microsoft in January, according to a LinkedIn spokesperson, cited by CNBC.

LinkedIn earlier this year reportedly cut some of its recruiting department staff and later laid off 716 employees, as announced in May. LinkedIn had explained in May that it was ending its Global Business Organization and curtailing its China presence. LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky back then had suggested that the macroeconomic environment for LinkedIn likely would remain challenging, and the company was managing its expenses to "invest in strategic growth areas."

LinkedIn also reported its own 668 job cuts in its "Layoff Latest" news, an ongoing staff-written feature. "Layoff Latest" also described tech-industry layoffs at Epic Games, Meta, Qualcomm, Rapid7 and more.

About the Author

Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.

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