LinkedIn, the social media network for professionals has joined the fray of job-cutting with a move to reduce headcount by about 700.
The Microsoft-owned company, which has 20,000 employees, made the announcement on Monday, revealing that it is also shutting down its China-focused job application as the tech winter lingers.
Global economic downturn has seen big players in the tech industry significantly cut their workforce as cutting costs become watchwords for companies fighting to stay afloat. Though compared to other companies towing this path, including its parent Microsoft, LinkedIn recorded notable quarterly profits last year.
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The company’s decision to cut jobs underlines the pressure the global economic outlook is mounting on companies. More than 270,000 tech jobs globally have been cut in the past six months, according to Layoffs.fyi.
Amazon leads the pack of tech companies’ layoffs with 27,000 job cuts, the most in its history. Others include social media conglomerate Meta, which has cut 21,000 jobs, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, which laid off 12,000 employees and microblogging app, Twitter, which also has cut its workforce by more than 7,500.
Layoffs.fyi said that 5,000 tech jobs have been eliminated in May alone, before LinkedIn’s announcement.
LinkedIn, which makes revenue selling ads and offering premium services generated $14.5 billion revenue in 2022. The company was bought for around $26 billion in 2016 by Microsoft, which has in recent months, announced about 10,000 job cuts. It also took a $1.2 billion charge related to the layoffs, according to Reuters.
In a letter to employees, quoted by Reuters, LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky said the move to cut roles in its sales, operations and support teams was aimed at streamlining the company’s operations and would remove layers to help make quicker decisions.
“With the market and customer demand fluctuating more, and to serve emerging and growth markets more effectively, we are expanding the use of vendors,” Roslansky wrote.
A LinkedIn spokesperson said the vendors were “external partners” who would take on new and existing work.
Roslansky also said in the letter that the changes would result in creating 250 new jobs. The spokesperson said that employees affected by the cuts would be eligible to apply for those roles.
LinkedIn also said it was eliminating the slimmed down jobs app that it offers in China after it decided in 2021 to mostly withdraw from the country, citing a “challenging” environment. The remaining China app, called InCareers, will be phased out by Aug. 9, LinkedIn said.
“Despite our initial progress, InCareer faced fierce competition and a challenging macroeconomic climate, which ultimately led us to the decision of discontinuing the service,” the company told users of the website.
LinkedIn will retain a presence in China to help companies operating there to hire and train employees outside the country, the company spokesperson said.