Online community network, Discord, is letting go of 170 employees, or 17% of its workforce.
Discord CEO Jason Citron laid the blame for recent layoffs on overhiring in an internal document that was acquired by The Verge. This is in line with other tech CEOs’ justifications. On Thursday, the layoffs were disclosed at an all-hands meeting.
“We grew quickly and expanded our workforce even faster, increasing by 5x since 2020,” Citron said in the memo.
“As a result, we took on more projects and became less efficient in how we operated. Today, we are increasingly clear on the need to sharpen our focus and improve the way we work together to bring more agility to our organization. This is what largely drove the decision to reduce the size of our workforce.”
According to the Verge, Discord enjoyed tremendous growth during pandemic lockdowns but is still not profitable. As part of a corporate reorganization, Discord let go of approximately 40 workers, or 4% of its workforce, in August of last year. Numerous layoffs had an impact on people working in marketing, design, and entertainment partnerships.
This week has been especially harsh for tech layoffs; in the past few days, Unity, the video game engine, has eliminated 1,800 jobs; Twitch, owned by Amazon, has let go of about 500 workers; and Amazon has let go of “several hundreds” of Prime Video and MGM Studios employees. Amazon also owns Audible, an audiobook startup that laid off 5% of its employees.
