We’ve just heard from LinkedIn that the Sequoia-backed business network will be cutting 36 of 370 employees, or around 10% of the company. LinkedIn is saying that some of these employees will be reassigned to new roles (though the company won’t comment on how many new roles there will be).
It’s likely that the cuts were prompted by investors like Sequoia pushing for cost cutting (the VC gave portfolio companies a 56 Slide Presentation of Doom last month in light of the economic crisis). But LinkedIn isn’t about to run out of money: the company just closed a $22.7 million infusion, which came on top of a $53 million Series D round in June that pegged LinkedIn’s valuation at $1 billion.
Less than a week ago the site launched its application platform, the grown-up answer to platforms on sites like Facebook and MySpace that are overrun with games and trivial apps.
Hmmm thanks for informational post.
Interesting. What do you make of Linkedin’s applications. I think they are a little limited in nature. I mean they have Huddle for Project Management but i prefer Deskaway .
I’m sure they can all find new jobs quickly. Their LinkedIn profiles are probably up to date, and they know how to navigate the LinkedIn job board.
This includes the Denver office, which was run by Matt Raible:
http://raiblede...din_cuts_10_a_k
“the grown-up answer to platforms on sites like Facebook and MySpace that are overrun with games and trivial apps.”
You say that like this one won’t be.
And just after their app platform thing launched. Thanks suckers for working on this now hit the bricks!
Wah wah waaaahh…
There are quite a few companies making tough people decisions at the moment – and it’s probably a sign of relative good health for those like LinkedIn and Revision3 who are inflicting the pain sooner rather than later.
It points to a pretty gloomy outlook – but it’s always about survival of the fittest out there.
I do hope that these new assignments for LinkedIn will be looking at getting their applications to run faster and more reliably on Safari and Firefox browsers, and see about putting an IM status into the API.
I’m working on searches for Dir of BD, Distribution (mid Peninsula, backed by Benchmark, Shasta, FRC), Dir of Onlne Marketing (Marin County, Shasta Tugboat), VP Engg (San Jose area, Maples Investments), Dir of UX Design (East Bay, Benchmark, Shasta), Dir of Partner Relations (same East Bay co) if anyone knows LinkedIN people affected by the layoff and wants to connect. Drop me a note at ed@inductus.com. Thanks.
Ok, now I believe it (I saw it elsewhere but was waiting to see it confirmed here).
How exactly are employees “cut” but “reassigned?” Doesn’t make sense to me.
Jason Alba
Author – I’m on LinkedIn — Now What???
Lay-offs are more than expected due to the financial crisis. I’m sure these people saw this coming a long time ago.
I’m fairly sure that most of the people that work for LinkedIn probably are involved in other projects they’re using to make money on the side with anyway.
Dwayne.
http://probablysucks.com
Why are you so sure?
mayb thats why they were let go
This is simply cutting out people they don’t really need (or those who aren’t pulling their weight). It’s what any lean and adaptable company would do. The economic opinion/climate is just a wake-up call to spur these companies to do what they should routinely do anyway.
I hope the cut the people who decided it was a good idea to add Amazon reading lists to clutter up profiles. LinkedIn will turn into another one of those more “childish” SNS and soon be “overrun with games and trivial apps.” They’re already on their way right out of the gate.
I was glad to see Box.net link up, but hope I (or the app) don’t accidentally permit a private folder to be shown as public.
LinkedIn should focus more on enterprise and SMB solutions, such as moving toward some CRM apps and allowing users to create database entries/notes/etc on their contacts.
Hope this isn’t going to affect the apps service being rolled out.
I don’t get this. They were supposedly profitable before they raised the $50M in the summer and before the recent $22M top up. Their user numbers are growing, so why not ride it out?
According to Valleywag, all may not be what it seems at LinkedIn in terms of profitability.
http://valleywa...business-is-not
Wasn’t that the post that turned out to be stupid wrong?
http://www.tech...nd-mcgraw-hill/
Strange move after their recent financial transactions. They are around for while and are probably ready for a first round of ‘cleansing’. I hope the affected people will find good work somewhere else soon.
I’m not sure if it’s just the usual “cleansing”. They are laying off some good experienced staff like Matt Raible, a well-known leader in the Java community.
Matt Raible leads an entire team not based out of Mountain View, according to his blog. Likely they are just closing remote offices.
Can somebody explain to me why LinkedIn employs 370 people to begin with? Seems like 320 too many. They don’t even build their own apps.
I’m not entirely convinced that Facebook can’t eat ALL of LinkedIn’s lunch.
Why not? people like to keep work and life separate.
a site built on making business connection laying off staff
that speaks volume ……………..of web 2.0 trash
Impressive, that’s a lot of employees.
I actually pay for the Linkedin service.
Hi, I’m revenue. Have we met?
I’ve seen critical views indicating that the discussions area of Linkedin Groups was thought to be a concern since people post job req’s there but the same was also said of Linkedin Answers (i.e. “spam”). But thinking that Linkedin can only generate revenue from Linkedin Jobs is probably myopic.
The functions of Groups and Answers to the people that don’t use the Jobs service is simple: they find it useful for now.
As to the impact or loss or revenue from what would have been a Jobs posting — my guess is even if you didn’t have the ability to post outside of Jobs these sample people would not have used the Jobs service in the first place.
I keep seeing new shiny featurelets appear in Linkedin and the interface is evolving quickly. Yet, the uptime and availability of basic features between refreshes or posting to the next form has moved from acceptable to not so much… it’s just frustrating.
Then again, they have some very unique challenges in what they are trying to bubble up as analytic vignettes that. Their cache and reuse of report oriented elements has got to be more confusing now as the Applications spill forth.
I think the the Linkedin Answers section needs a fresh review of how they mitigate “spam” and OT posting within topical areas. It is a war worth funding lest they lose it to apathy.
I really really want to like Linkedin but I’m feeling really beta tester-ish lately. I hope this 10% cut isn’t going to exacerbate that concern.
A sad, but probably entirely necessary move. Hopefully they let go some of the more smug dbags in product and engineering that think they’re smarter than everyone else so the company can refocus on making a cleaner service.
Wonder if their resumes will be on LinkedIn.
The home page is getting rather crowded; I’m seeing lots of spam disguised as “questions” or “answers” and some things don’t get updated though I’ve already clicked on them.
Getting messy and less useful.
Who’s next in the firing line… ??
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com
i thought people were losing jobs in India only. looks like it all started in US
In India company are doing pay-cuts not job-cuts.
http://www.tolm...eter/group/6081
In India, the situation is improved now. More and more jobs are available as more and more entrepreneurs are coming.