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Most of us WordPress professionals and some others in the tech industry managed to escape the 2022 tech layoffs, which mostly affected venture capital-funded startups and larger companies that had over-hired during the economic upswing that came with the pandemic precautions being lifted in many places around the world. Mass layoffs were a big hit to companies like Meta, Peleton, Stripe, Carvana, and more (both big and small) during the last half of 2022.
Tech layoffs are still continuing relentlessly in 2023, with major players in the tech world like PayPal, Spotify, Google, Microsoft, Coinbase, Salesforce, and Amazon cutting tens of thousands of workers in January alone. This particular round of layoffs seems to be more brutal than the last, as it hits more close to home for many WordPress professionals.
Layoffs.fyi, which is a tracking website for layoffs, has logged some 376 tech companies with a total of 107,930 employees laid off. Both the number of companies and number of employees laid off in January were the highest they have been over the past year.
Just last week, GoDaddy announced it will be reducing the size of its global team by about 8%, which works out to approximately 530 employees, with cuts that hit teams working on WordPress and WooCommerce hosting products.
“Despite increasingly challenging macroeconomic conditions, we made progress on our 2022 strategic initiatives and continued our efforts to manage costs effectively. The discipline we embraced was important but, unfortunately, it was not sufficient to avoid the impacts of slower growth in a prolonged, uncertain macroeconomic environment.”
GoDaddy CEO Aman Bhutani
The layoffs came as a surprise to GoDaddy’s employees, after they had been assured the company would not be cutting jobs, now this happens. A few days after employees were let go, the company reported significant growth in its last earnings call, with a total revenue of $4.1 billion in 2022, up 7.2% year-over-year, and 8.4% on a constant currency basis.
A former GoDaddy employee, who was impacted by the layoffs and wishes to remain anonymous, said that “employees and their managers were blindsided.” They were offered approximately three months of severance pay plus two weeks severance per year of tenure.
“The severance package was average at best – a few months of runway in exchange for releasing GoDaddy from all liability. It’s the minimum requirement to get people to sign legal releases. Items such as stock that wasn’t fully vested must be forfeited.”
the source said
The source also reported that the employees who were laid off were cherry-picked from different teams. Despite GoDaddy’s heavy investments into WordPress and recent acquisitions of brands such as Skyverge and Pagely, the company elected to downsize many who were active in its WordPress efforts.
“I’m seeing lots of WordPress-related product/marketing folks getting cut.”
the source said
DigitalOcean, which acquired managed hosting company Cloudways for $350 million in cash last year, told staff it is laying off 11 percent of its workforce, working out to approximately 200 employees. The Register reports that 100 employees were immediately let go and another 100 will follow. The cuts include members of the company’s content team, causing is concern about the future of the company’s documentation resources.
Larger tech companies are not the only ones reducing their workforces though. The economic conditions behind these cuts are also affecting smaller organizations like XWP, a WordPress agency that laid off some employees two months ago. Human Made, an agency that builds WordPress sites and products for enterprise customers, has also been affected by cuts to the workforce. The company recently announced a round of redundancies for the first time in its history.
“This has been a tough few weeks, particularly for those leaving who now face an uncertain future. It’s also been tough for the rest of company, this is not [a] situation we wanted to be in and even with the wider economic headwinds the industry is facing, there are also important lessons for us to learn.”
Human Made CEO and co-founder Tom Willmot said
As part of its commitment to transparency, Human Made has also published the details of its redundancy support package, which includes a minimum notice period of four weeks plus one week for each year past two, and two weeks pay on top of the notice, among other benefits.
WordPress product companies are stepping up to help people find new work though. Easily Amused, Trew Knowledge, SiteCare, and other companies across Twitter, Mastodon, and LinkedIn have responded to posts with links to open positions that they have for those laid off. Michelle Frechette, Director of Community Engagement at StellarWP, publishes a weekly thread with available jobs from around the WordPress community. Her most recent thread from just last week includes information on 10 companies that are currently hiring that some may be interested in.
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