LinkedIn lays off nearly 700 staff, engineers to suffer the most

Microsoft is kicking off another round of layoffs, this time cutting 668 jobs across several teams at LinkedIn. 

News of the cuts came this morning, which LinkedIn confirmed in a brief blog post that it described to The Register as "full." According to the Microsoft subsidiary, the cuts will range across engineering, product, talent, and finance teams and were made as part of organizational restructuring and streamlining "to ensure we continue to deliver value for our members and customers." 

A more detailed account of the layoffs penned by LinkedIn's SVP of engineering Mohak Shroff and CPO Tomer Cohen was sent to current employees and found its way online today, and with it a more detailed account of the lost jobs. 

Per the memo, 563 roles in LinkedIn research and development are being cut, 137 engineer management roles, and 38 product staffers among them. The bulk of the cuts - 388 jobs - are being culled directly from engineering teams, though a few people will be saved "to fill critical gaps in our ambitious roadmap," the executive duo said. The remaining 105 eliminated positions, we assume, will come from the aforementioned non-engineering teams. 

The changes are necessary as Microsoft continues "adapting our organizational structures to improve agility and accountability, establishing unambiguous ownership, and driving improved efficiency & transparency through reduced layering," Shroff and Cohen said. 

LinkedIn didn't offer us any additional comment beside the brief blog post it published earlier today. 

Multiple self-identified LinkedIn employees confirmed the layoffs on anonymous tech industry jobs site Blind. A Microsoft employee posting on a Blind thread about the LinkedIn layoffs said rumors in Redmond indicate more job cuts may be announced next week.

Layoffs will continue until profit improves

Microsoft netted $72.4 billion (£59b) in its 2023 fiscal year, which ended June 30, which it classified as a slight decrease from last year's profits. The year-over-year loss comes on the heels of massive Microsoft layoffs that apparently still haven't done enough to put enough cash in company coffers.

Microsoft announced in January that it planned to cut 10,000 employees by the end of its third quarter. Those layoffs were followed with a second wave of firings in July, shortly after the end of its slightly-less-profitable year. Microsoft never bothered to specify how many people it laid off in the second round of cuts.

LinkedIn also exited China earlier this year, leading to a further 716 cut jobs at the business social network. 

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Microsoft's multiple waves of layoffs haven't pleased the rank-and-file, who reportedly expressed frustration at CEO Satya Nadella's classification of FY23 as a "landmark" year for the Windows maker. Microsoft announced $0.68/share quarterly dividends in June, and share prices hit new all-time highs this year while generally being up since early 2023. 

Microsoft also had the $69 billion it needed to buy video game studio Activision-Blizzard this year, a deal that finally cleared regulatory hurdles last week.

Despite all that, Microsoft employees had their pay frozen earlier this year, mass job cuts continue, and Redmond was just told by the IRS that it owed $29 billion in taxes that went unpaid between 2004 and 2013 thanks to its selling assets to its subsidiaries at reduced prices.

None of that really matters, though, because Wall Street approves. Microsoft's share prices were generally unaffected after it announced its IRS bill last week, and jumped today on news of the LinkedIn layoffs. ®