LinkedIn Planning To Lay Off 5% of Staff In Latest Tech-Sector Cuts (reuters.com) 33
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: LinkedIn planned to inform staff of layoffs on Wednesday, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters, in a widening of technology sector cuts this year. The Microsoft-owned social network plans to cut about 5% of its headcount as it reorganizes teams and focuses personnel on areas where its business is growing [...].
LinkedIn employs more than 17,500 full-time workers globally, its website says. Reuters was unable to determine the teams affected. The cuts come as revenue at LinkedIn, which sells recruiting tools and subscriptions, rose 12% in the just-ended quarter from a year prior, in an acceleration of growth in 2026, according to Microsoft's securities filings. The layoff rationale was not for artificial intelligence to replace jobs at LinkedIn, one of the people told Reuters. The specter of AI-fueled disruption has nonetheless hung over software incumbents and workers generally.
LinkedIn employs more than 17,500 full-time workers globally, its website says. Reuters was unable to determine the teams affected. The cuts come as revenue at LinkedIn, which sells recruiting tools and subscriptions, rose 12% in the just-ended quarter from a year prior, in an acceleration of growth in 2026, according to Microsoft's securities filings. The layoff rationale was not for artificial intelligence to replace jobs at LinkedIn, one of the people told Reuters. The specter of AI-fueled disruption has nonetheless hung over software incumbents and workers generally.
So ... (Score:2)
In other words, LinkedIn performed 5% worse than expected because they ruined the site
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idk
revenue at LinkedIn, which sells recruiting tools and subscriptions, rose 12% in the just-ended quarter
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And yet they're still showing people the door.
Revenue != profit.
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If you find a way to do the same thing with less people, you make more money.
no H1B visas for 5 years after a layoff this size (Score:2)
The laws should be changed so that a company laying off or firing more than 50 persons in a rolling 12 month period cannot apply for H1B or other visa based workers and cannot get existing visas extended for its current workers.
They did NOT blame AI? (Score:4, Funny)
Slap me!
(I'm getting a pay-wall, so can't verify.)
Re:Fire the DEI - DEI cannot do their jobs. (Score:4, Insightful)
No roasting, just a honest suggestion to pay more attention to your mental health. The entirety of your comments are tirades about woke this and DEI that. This is a technology site, I hope the disconnect is evident.
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Unfortunately not a bot, just a sad, disturbed British man:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ji... [linkedin.com]
https://about.me/jameseadon [about.me]
https://eadon.com/about/ [eadon.com]
Honest Rationale (Score:4, Interesting)
This article is tipping toeing around with the AI buzzword. But with LinkedIn it's a lot harder to not be honest on the likely reasoning being just approaching plain ole recession. With so much of its revenue being dependent on a healthy job market, it's a lot harder to make money off other businesses who are advertising, hiring, or training when they are cinching their belts.
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I think you have that inverted. When the job market is shitty, that's when more people are looking for work. People that are serious about looking for work are more likely to spend on professional services that accelerate them finding their next job.
When I was briefly unemployed for a couple months, I subscribed to LinkedIn to get the useful bells and whistles for job searching. And when I accepted a position, I immediately cancelled the subscription.
Higher unemployment means better revenue for LinkedIn.
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They are taking money on the postings and on the subscriptions of the corporate headhunters. So while user subscriptions may be up, that's just the most user visible side of their income. Again besides ads and training.
Where ya gonna go? (Score:5, Interesting)
The sad irony is that most of the staff being laid off will be using the services of the company that just axed them to try to land a new job.
Re: Where ya gonna go? (Score:4, Funny)
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Closest to the joke I was looking for?
But maybe they will now use LinkedIn to find much better opportunities? Unless they prefer to spend more time with their families?
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Well, hey, they ought to know how to pull the right levers at least!
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Possibly, but I've not personally found jobs through LinkedIn, maybe I'm less tolerant of their site but Monster/Indeed have been much better for me over the course of my career than LinkedIn.
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I doubt it, LinkedIn is pretty useless for job hunting in my experience. The best that can be said about it is it helps with networking when you have a job.
Company Cutting the Dead Wood (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Company Cutting the Dead Wood (Score:5, Funny)
7,499 sell ads.
10,000 send emails asking you to 'upgrade to premium.'
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Sounds like those 10,000 can be replaced by a crontab.
Why are they only laying off 5%?
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Do you even microservices bro? Netflix is just a silly site that streams movies. Expedia and booking.com are silly sites that sell travel related .. tickets. LinkedIn may not seem anywhere near as complex as those but you better believe it's got a lot of complexity to manage. IDK they could all be in sales for all I know. My company has 20,000 employees or so and I know that engineering teams make up about 10% of that total.
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You're right, you don't gotta. Similar comments appear under every layoff announcement article and I think it's a knee-jerk reaction to the number. LinkedIn's business model is a lot bigger/more complex than just job listings. Learning courses, advertising, blah blah blah.. Microsoft bought them for $196/share in 2016. That was and is a buttload of money.
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My company has 20,000 employees or so and I know that engineering teams make up about 10% of that total.
Let me guess, 10,000 are in HR, 2,000 in Legal, 3,000 in Marketing, and 3,000 in Sales
small by social media network standards (Score:1)
There's a whole part of it you don't see. The masses who voluntarily use linkedin are just the hogs for the processing plant. There are many constituencies linkedin serves, like recruiters and HR and marketing departments. Think about the sales people, account reps, and all the other people who go into supporting an organization like that. Plus what you need for legal compliance in a social media world, like content moderation teams. And it's a Microsoft operation so imagine that half of every day is filled
Everything is always more work (Score:2)
These are the kind of little mental tricks human beings have developed over the centuries to maintain a sense of place and self in a chaotic world. It worked really well when our societies were small and relativ
95% to go (Score:2)
^
Fewer and fewer (Score:2)
The usual 5% or 10% are becoming fewer and fewer people, due to the large number who have already been laid off. Soon, 5% will mean like, 2 people.
Meh...just a vector for foreign espionage (Score:2)
LinkedIn is primarily a convenient platform for state sponsored IP theft, hacking and espionage via asset recruitment of highly positioned individuals, and funding of totalitarian regimes (North Korea) through remote work scams. And just when you think it can't get worse, video and audio spoofing by AI has made it much worse. You can pin the blame on the HR departments not doing their due dilligence, but LinkedIn sure is a big enabler.