eBay layoff is the latest to join the layoff trend as the e-commerce platform has revealed plans to cut around 1,000 employees, around 9% of its full-time employees and reduce work for its outside contractors, stating its staffing and costs have outpaced the company’s “overall headcount and expenses have outpaced the growth of our business.”
It’s worth noting that the company had reported a $1.3 billion profit last quarter. The decision to reduce workforce, however, was made as the company saw a “need for change” and “there is more we can do to ensure our success”, CEO Jamie Iannone said. He added that eBay should be a “more nimble” company that “makes decisions more quickly” to position itself for “long-term, sustainable growth.”
Iannone continued: “To address this, we’re implementing organisational changes that align and consolidate certain teams to improve the end-to-end experience and better meet the needs of our customers around the world”, thus resulting in the first eBay layoff of 2024. Moreover, this is just the start, as the eBay layoff will continue in the coming months, as the e-commerce company stated it will lay off an unspecified number of contractors.
eBay Layoff Will Lead to Long-Term Success
While other tech companies may use the excuse of excess hiring during the pandemic and the downward spiral of the company’s profit to lay off its employees, the eBay layoff is different, as Iannone bluntly stated that they are reducing their workforce to ensure better long-term success.
In his note sent to the internal employees, he wrote: “We plan to scale back the number of contracts we have within our alternate workforce over the coming months to allow us to be more nimble, bring like-work together, and help us make decisions more quickly for eBay’s long-term, sustainable growth.”
Although laying off 1,000 employees may seem like a heartless decision, the employees would have some solace in knowing that everything would be done privately, unlike when Elon Musk fired people openly in a meeting. For context, Iannone mentioned: “We request that all U.S. employees work from home on January 24th to provide some space and privacy for these conversations. We’re committed to treating everyone with respect and empathy through this transition and providing impacted employees with support and resources.”
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eBay Layoff 2024 Marks the Company’s Second Round of Job Reductions within a Year
Like every other tech giant last year after the pandemic-fuelled e-commerce boom, the first eBay layoff began in February 2023 when the online marketplace cut around 500 workers, or about 4% of its workforce, citing a lull in shopper investing.
In his memo, Iannone wrote: “This shift gives us additional space to invest and create new roles in high-potential areas — new technologies, customer innovations and key markets — and to continue to adapt and flex with the changing macro, e-commerce and technology landscape.”
The move appears to have worked well as the e-commerce company did recorded a profit during the final quarter despite gradually losing market share to Amazon and Walmart. At this moment in time, with the company adopting double the amount of last year, will eBay have twice as much success in 2024?
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The eBay Layoff is Just the Tip of the Iceberg for Employees Dismissal in 2024
As we touched upon in our tech layoff recap last year, the layoffs will continue in 2024, as the eBay layoff is only one of many we did not report. For example, Google cut around 1000 employees from its hardware, core-engineering and assistants team to ensure better work efficiency.
Twitch and Discord also made headlines with their massive layoffs, as the former reduced 35% of its workforce due to the organisation’s size not aligning with its current goal. As for the latter, it removed 17% of its staff to “sharpen their focus and improve the way they work together to bring more agility to our organisation.”
Humane, the company behind the revolutionary AI pin, also cut 4% of its employees as “part of a wider refresh of our organisational structure as our company evolves with purpose for this next phase of growth.”
Thus, with the eBay layoff being the latest in line, would the overall amount of 2024 exceed the 240,000 we saw last year? Let us know your thoughts on our Facebook and Twitter social media pages.