According to a memo from the CEO, PayPal, a money transfer service, has announced mass layoffs. This will allow 7% of its workforce to be released.
Employees were told by Dan Schulman, President and CEO of the company, “We made significant progress strengthening and reshaping the company to address challenging macroeconomic conditions while continuing to invest for our customers’ needs.”
Schulman made comments about “substantial progress” before telling his team to “continue changing as our world, customers, and competitive landscape evolve”.
The company claims that the 2,000 cuts will be made over several weeks. It also promises to provide “generous” severance and consultation packages, as well as support former employees during their exit from the company.
Schulman stated that “We will be reducing the global workforce by approximately 2000 full-time employees, which is roughly 7% of our total workforce.”
After a terrible year in 2022, PayPal stock rebounded by more than 10% in Jan 2023. PayPal Holdings Inc. lost over 50% of its value last year. It dropped from more than $180 per share to less than $90.
Change can be hard, especially when it involves friends and valued colleagues leaving. The CEO stated that we will confront this together using the unrivaled scale of our global platform, strategic investments to strengthen our core capabilities, and the trust and loyalty of our customers.
PayPal joins the growing list of tech companies that are cutting their workforces, including the recent Spotify layoffs of 6,000 employees.
Microsoft said it couldn’t “defy gravity” when it released 10,000 workers in mid-January 2023, approximately 5% of its staff. Despite this, Microsoft announced soon thereafter that it was dumping billions into an artificial intelligence company and the advancement of AI technologies.
Amazon announced that it would be cutting 8,000 jobs in 2023, stating that the company cannot keep up with rising inflation.
Meta announced that 11,000 employees would be laid off in late 2022. This set off a firestorm of tech industry layoffs and Silicon Valley chaos.
