We’re nearing the middle of this year, and the wave of mass layoffs among tech companies that began in 2022 doesn’t seem to have ended. Almost every week we receive news from well-known companies announcing personal reduction. In April, according to Crunchbase data, more than 17,000 jobs were lost and so far in May more than 3,000 people have been laid off.
LinkedIn has not become the exception. The world’s largest employment social network, which just turned 20, will lay off 716 employees. The CEO of the Microsoft-owned company, Ryan Roslansky, said this week in a blog post that the moves are in response to “changes in customer behavior and slower revenue growth.”
LinkedIn is also cutting staff
The head of the platform has added that it is driving changes in the midst of a global landscape that “changes rapidly” and that is affected by a “challenging macroeconomic environment.” In relation to these factors, the company has initiated a plan of global reorganization business that includes, in addition to layoffs, the closure of the Chinese application InCareer.
The relationship between the US platform and the Asian country has been marked by tension from the outset. LinkedIn first arrived in China with that name in 2014, but with a local version to meet the country’s requirements to operate in that market. The strategy paid off. By 2021, according to Business of Apps data, LinkedIn had 50 million users.
In terms of magnitude, the Chinese market was the third most important for LinkedIn, only after the United States and India. However, that same year he announced that he would suspend registrations to focus on comply with regulationsbut later decided to drop the LinkedIn brand and its entire social platform and replace it with InCareer, a platform where only job postings could be posted.
The social network had described its presence in China as a “challenging operating environment”, possibly due to the strict controls of what is published on the network and the threats related to freedom of expression. In fact, LinkedIn was the last of the large social networks in the United States that still had a presence there. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, for example, left the country long ago.
With this latest movement, InCareer will stop working on August 9 of this year and the presence of LinkedIn will be substantially diluted, but not completely. Roslansky has said they will focus their strategy on China to help companies operating there recruit, market and train abroad, so they will continue to have on-site HR and marketing employees.
Images: Greg Bulla | Ben Sweet
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