LinkedIn cuts 700 jobs worldwide as it pulls out of China

LinkedIn cuts 700 jobs worldwide as it pulls out of China after being criticized for censoring content for CCP

• Professional networking platform LinkedIn says it’s laying off more than 700 workers and shuttering its China jobs app
• Chinese version of LinkedIn’s website is to be closed after Beijing cracked down on the internet sector 
• LinkedIn blamed ‘shifts in customer behavior and slower revenue growth’ for the cuts, which it announced in a blogpost

Social networking firm LinkedIn announced on Tuesday that it will close down its last service available in China, citing ‘fierce competition and a challenging macroeconomic climate’.

Microsoft-owned LinkedIn was one of the few US technology companies to successfully operate a social media site in China, where the internet is heavily regulated and censored.

The company had introduced a unique domestic version of the career networking platform operated locally in order to comply.

In 2021, new sign-ups for the LinkedIn app in mainland China were suspended by the firm, which referenced a ‘significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China’.

Microsoft then replaced it with a simplified version called InCareer, which allowed local professionals to continue to find and apply for jobs as well as stay connected with their network.

InCareer was launched a jobs board that didn’t include a social feed or or the ability to share posts or articles. 

LinkedIn was one of the few US technology companies to successfully operate a social media site in China but it has now decided to continue operating in the country

An email from CEO Ryan Roslansky, pictured,  revealed how closing the China service would result in ‘a reduction of roles for 716 employees’ blaming ‘shifts in customer behavior and slower revenue growth.’

‘After careful consideration, we’ve made the decision to discontinue InCareer effective August 9, 2023,’ the platform said in a statement on Tuesday.

‘Despite our initial progress, InCareer faced fierce competition and a challenging macroeconomic climate, which ultimately led us to the decision of discontinuing the service,’ LinkedIn said.

An email from CEO Ryan Roslansky published online added that closing the China service would result in ‘a reduction of roles for 716 employees’ noting ‘shifts in customer behavior and slower revenue growth.’

As part of its strategic shake-up, LinkedIn said it will be ‘opening up more than 250 new roles’ in parts of its operations team as well as new business and account management teams starting on May 15. 

LinkedIn previous laid off almost 1,000 employees in July 2020, or approximately six percent of its global workforce.

At the time, LinkedIn’s business was hit by the slowdown in hiring as companies laid off staff or sharply curtailed recruitment.  

LinkedIn blamed ‘shifts in customer behavior and slower revenue growth’ for the cuts. Technology companies have resorted to recurring waves of layoffs over the past year, in new phenomenon to hit the industry that reverses more than a decade of mostly unbridled growth. 

A representative from the company also said that LinkedIn would ‘continue to have a presence’ in the country by focusing on ‘assisting companies operating in China to hire, market, and train abroad’.

The US firm once achieved a rapid rise in China, benefiting from a culture of connections, or ‘guanxi’, in which one’s contacts and professional network are essential assets.

However, LinkedIn has been marginalized in recent years as innovative local apps have surged in popularity.

Several U.S. journalists and activists working in China said their profiles had been blocked because of ‘prohibited content’, reports the New York Times.

In the west, LinkedIn has had something of a resurgence over the last year or so.   

A changing economic conditions, over-hiring, and falls in the stock market drops ed to mass layoffs across the tech and media industries, those losing their jobs have posted to the site in their most vulnerable moments. 

During the pandemic, many posted stories of how lockdowns were affecting their jobs. Now, users are sharing stories of how they were laid off.

Previously the site was a place for people to boat about their career and accomplishments but the tone has shifted.

At just seven large tech firms, the job cuts announced in recent months total nearly 70,000: Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce, HP and Twitter

Most US internet giants – including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube – have long been blocked in China as they fail to comply with strict and often murky regulations.

Tech firms operating in the country are pressured to block unwanted content and topics considered politically sensitive in the name of social stability.

LinkedIn has come under fire in recent years for removing the accounts of dissidents and erasing content on sensitive issues.

Technology companies have resorted to recurring waves of layoffs over the past year, in new phenomenon to hit the industry that reverses more than a decade of mostly unbridled growth.

Tech job cuts – including mass layoffs at Meta and Twitter – are accelerating 

In recent months, several tech companies have announced cost-cutting measures, with Amazon, Apple and Google-parent Alphabet all announcing hiring slowdowns or freezes.

For the tech sector, the pandemic boom has turned to a post-pandemic bust, as increasing interest rates rock share prices and inflation cuts into profits.

The sector shed 9,587 jobs in October, the largest monthly total since November 2020, according to data from consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas cited by Bloomberg. 

Total job cuts announced by US-based employers jumped 13% to 33,843 in October, the highest since February 2021, a report said.   

PayPal 

PayPal Holdings Inc. is scheduled to report quarterly results on February 9. Shares of the company are down about 53% in the past year. They rose 2.3% to close Tuesday at $81.49

PayPal has announced it will cut back around 7% of its total workforce, or about 2,000 full-time workers, as the digital payments company contends with what it calls ‘the challenging macro-economic environment’. 

PayPal said it will make the cuts over several weeks, with some of its organizations affected more than others. 

The company did not further specify. PayPal is the parent of Venmo, Xoom and Honey, among other brands. The company is based in San Jose, California. 

‘Over the past year, we made significant progress in strengthening and reshaping our company to address the challenging macro-economic environment while continuing to invest to meet our customers’ needs,’ PayPal President and CEO Dan Schulman said Tuesday in a statement.

‘While we have made substantial progress in right-sizing our cost structure, and focused our resources on our core strategic priorities, we have more work to do.’

Alphabet

Google’s parent company Alphabet is axing 12,000 jobs in the latest round of white collar layoffs sweeping across the tech sector.

Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s CEO, said the losses affect teams across the company including recruiting and some corporate functions, as well as some engineering and products teams.

Pichai said in the note: ‘I am confident about the huge opportunity in front of us thanks to the strength of our mission, the value of our products and services, and our early investments in AI.

‘To fully capture it, we’ll need to make tough choices. So, we’ve undertaken a rigorous review across product areas and functions to ensure that our people and roles are aligned with our highest priorities as a company. The roles we’re eliminating reflect the outcome of that review. They cut across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels and regions.’

Meta 

The Facebook-parent said in November it would cut 13% of its workforce, or more than 11,000 employees, in one of the biggest tech layoffs this year as it grapples with a weak advertising market and mounting costs.

Meta said it would cut 13% of its workforce, or more than 11,000 employees, in one of the biggest tech layoffs this year

Like its peers, Meta aggressively hired during the pandemic to meet a surge in social media usage by stuck-at-home consumers. 

But the pandemic boom-times have petered out as advertisers and consumers halt spending in the face of rising costs and rapidly increasing interest rates.

After plunging billions into CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse vision with little to show for it, Meta has been faced with rising costs and shrinking profits.

Meta, once worth more than $1 trillion, is now valued at $256 billion after losing more than 70% of its value last year alone. 

‘Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected,’ Zuckerberg said in a message to employees, according to Reuters.

‘I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.’

Mark Zuckerberg delivered news about the job cuts on a call with hundreds of Meta executives

On a short call, a red-eyed Zuckerberg addressed employees but took no questions. 

He stuck to a script that closely followed the wording in the morning’s blogpost and called the increased investments in e-commerce a ‘big mistake in planning.’

Twitter

Twitter laid off half its workforce across teams ranging from communications and content curation to product and engineering following Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover.

The cutbacks affected around 3,700 employees, who learned their fate by email last week. 

However, Bloomberg reported Twitter was reaching out to dozens of employees who lost their jobs, asking them to return.

Twitter laid off half its workforce across teams ranging from communications and content curation to product and engineering

Elon Musk previously said there was no other choice but to impose mass layoffs as the company sheds hundreds of millions of dollars every year and needs a financial overhaul

Salesforce

In January, cloud-based software company Salesforce announced it will lay off 10% of its employees or about 8,000 workers.

CEO Marc Benioff cited a rough period for the tech sector as well as over-hiring during the coronavirus pandemic leading to the decision. 

Several weeks ago, it quietly laid off hundreds of employees.

‘Our sales performance process drives accountability. Unfortunately, that can lead to some leaving the business, and we support them through their transition,’ a Salesforce spokesperson told CNBC in a statement in November.

Salesforce had 73,541 employees at the start of last year – it is the largest employer in the San Francisco area. 

Salesforce said in an August filing that headcount rose 36% in the past year ‘to meet the higher demand for services from our customers’. 

Amazon

Amazon said it would lay off 18,000 corporate and technology jobs in what will be the largest job cuts in the company’s history. 

Amazon reportedly lost $1trillion over the year after its stock plummeted from a high during the pandemic. 

If the company goes through with its proposal to cut 10,000 jobs, it would lose around 3% of Amazon’s corporate employees

The move comes after the company put a hiring freeze in place, affecting major teams including Prime Video, Alexa and Amazon Fresh.

‘We’re facing an unusual macroeconomic environment, and want to balance our hiring and investments with being thoughtful about this economy,’ Beth Galetti, senior vice president of people experience and technology at Amazon, wrote in a memo, seen by the Wall Street Journal.

Intel

Intel Corp’s CEO Pat Gelsinger told Reuters ‘people actions’ would be part of a cost-reduction plan. 

The chipmaker said recently it would lower costs by $3 billion in 2023, before ramping that up to $10 billion by 2025.

The adjustments would start in the fourth quarter, Gelsinger said, but did not specify how many employees would be affected.

Some Intel divisions, including the sales and marketing group, could be reduced by up to 20%, Bloomberg News reported last month, citing people with knowledge of the situation.

Chipmaker Intel is reportedly planning major layoffs, likely to be in the thousands, in the face of a slowdown in the personal computer market

Intel had 113,700 employees as of July, when it slashed its annual sales forecast by $11 billion after missing estimates for second-quarter results.

Intel, based in Santa Clara, California, declined to comment on the job cuts when reached by DailyMail.com in October. 

Intel has been stung by shifting market trends, including the decline of traditional personal computers as smartphones and tablets rise in popularity.

Last quarter, global PC shipments, including desktops and laptops, declined another 15% from a year ago, according to IDC. 

Microsoft

Microsoft in January initiated layoffs of 10,000 employees, citing slowing customer demand and a negative economic environment.

‘We’re also seeing organizations in every industry and geography exercise caution as some parts of the world are in a recession and other parts are anticipating one,’ CEO Satya Nadella said in a company memo.

The layoffs affected nearly 5% of Microsoft’s global workforce. 

Microsoft previously laid off under 1,000 employees across several divisions last year, according to Axios.

In a statement, Microsoft executives said: ‘Like all companies, we evaluate our business priorities on a regular basis, and make structural adjustments accordingly.

Microsoft laid off under 1,000 employees across several divisions last month, according to Axios

‘We will continue to invest in our business and hire in key growth areas in the year ahead.’

Microsoft executives previously announced in July that it was laying off less than 1% of its workforce and significantly slow hiring, as its revenue fell short of investor expectations.

The company recorded only $51.9 billion in revenue during the second quarter of the year, but was expected to rake in $52.4 billion.

It had previously recorded blockbuster growth during the COVID pandemic, when consumers and businesses turned to its products as they shifted to a work-from-home model.

Lyft

Ride-hailing firm Lyft said it would lay off 13% of its workforce, or about 683 employees, after it already cut 60 jobs earlier this year and froze hiring in September.

Lyft said in a regulatory filing it would likely incur $27 to $32 million in restructuring charges related to the layoffs. 

‘We are not immune to the realities of inflation and a slowing economy,’ Lyft’s founders wrote in the memo to staffers. 

Ride-hailing firm Lyft said it would lay off 13% of its workforce, or around 683 employees, after it already cut 60 jobs earlier this year

The company’s share price has dropped 76% since the start of the year and currently stands at around $10, compared to nearly $45 in January.

Announcing the job cuts in a memo seen by the Wall Street Journal, Lyft founders John Zimmer and Logan Green told staff: ‘There are several challenges playing out across the economy.

‘We’re facing a probable recession sometime in the next year and rideshare insurance costs are going up.

‘We worked hard to bring down costs this summer: we slowed, then froze hiring; cut spending; and paused less-critical initiatives.

‘Still, Lyft has to become leaner, which requires us to part with incredible team members.’

Lyft has around 4,000 employees, not including its drivers.

Spotify

The music streaming service said on January 22 it plans to cut 6% of its workforce, an estimated 588 employees from its 9,800 full time staff. 

Spotify said it will incur about $38million in severance-related charges.

The company, whose CEO is Daniel Ek, said its chief content and advertising business officer Dawn Ostroff will also depart.

Spotify said on January 22 it plans to cut 6% of its workforce, an estimated 588 employees

Apple 

Though Apple has not yet announced any major layoffs, CEO Tim Cook told CBS Mornings that it is slowing some hiring as well.

‘What we’re doing as a consequence of being in this period, is we’re being very deliberate in our hiring,’ he said. 

‘That means we’re continuing to hire, but not everywhere in the company are we hiring.’

At the same time, though, Cook said ‘we don’t believe you can save your way to prosperity’.  

‘We think you invest your way to it,’ he said.

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