LinkedIn lays off 668 workers
LinkedIn's cutting 668 workers - about 4% of their workforce - across engineering, product, talent, and finance. This isn't their first rodeo. They already laid off 716 people in May. So that's nearly 1,400 jobs gone in six months.
Here's the context: during the pandemic, LinkedIn went on a hiring spree. About 40% of their nearly 20,000 employees were hired in that period. They overexpanded, and now they're correcting. It's the same pattern we've seen across tech - pandemic growth assumptions that didn't pan out.
They're also dumping 63,000 square feet of office space at their San Francisco headquarters. That's a clear signal they're not expecting people to come back to the office, or at least not at previous levels.
LinkedIn operates independently under Microsoft, which means they can't just absorb excess employees into other divisions. They have to run as their own P&L. With ad revenue and hiring slowing down (which directly impacts LinkedIn's business model), layoffs were probably inevitable. Still doesn't make it easier for the people losing their jobs.