October has brought another wave of layoffs across the tech industry.
HubSpot, Netflix, Flock, Airtable, and Amazon have all announced cuts in recent days, affecting thousands of employees.
The reasons seem to vary, from AI-focused restructuring and post-acquisition overhauls to coping with public backlash and pandemic-era overhiring. But the overall pattern is still the same: tech companies are trimming their headcounts.
HubSpot Inc.
The platform known for helping companies manage customers, sales, and marketing announced on October 6 that it would be cutting 7% of its workforce, roughly 660 employees, as it reorganizes around what it calls AI-driven customer outcomes.
Yamini Rangan, HubSpot CEO, told employees in a memo that the layoffs were “not driven by AI-related efficiencies,” but the aim was to focus on “aligning our organization with our strategy and how we need to operate going forward.”
AI has been central to the company’s growing concerns over the last year. In August, Rangan blamed AI for why HubSpot was trying to adjust its product and pricing after the company “got off to a slow start” in April.
Netflix Inc.
The streaming giant announced on Wednesday that approximately 1,000 employees would be laid off—6% of its global workforce.
It’s not clear how many U.S.-based positions will be impacted. This is Netflix’s largest round of job cuts since 2022, when it cut 450 staffers after it lost 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of the year.
After the news broke, Netflix’s Bela Bajaria was announced to be leaving on Thursday after 10 years at the company, most recently as its chief content officer. She will be replaced by former Disney and Fox executive Peter Rice, Puck reported.
Most of the layoffs will affect employees in Netflix’s product, technology, legal and HR teams, co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters wrote in an email to employees.
The company is scheduled to publish its third-quarter financial results on October 20.
Flock Safety
Surveillance camera brand Flock announced on October 9 that it would be cutting its workforce as the company deals with ongoing backlash against its product.
Flock said it will reduce its staff by 18%, around 270 employees, across the board. Employees will leave by the end of October following a voluntary buyout program, Reuters reported.
This comes after news broke in September that Flock had been asking some of its employees to leave to avoid mandatory layoffs, according to Wired.
Flock has been criticized by the public and privacy rights groups over its surveillance network, which uses license plate-reading cameras to allow police and federal agents to follow and track the vehicles picked up on the cameras.
The Atlanta-based security company is now facing multiple legal actions, including a class action lawsuit in California and two federal class-action lawsuits in Georgia.
Flock did not respond to Fast Company’s request for comment as of reporting.
Airtable
The San Francisco software company is laying off a “large portion” of its pre-acquisition workforce weeks after Bending Spoons completed its $1.3 billion purchase of the platform.
Alessandra Savarese, who joined Airtable to lead product development after the acquisition, announced on Monday that the affected employees will leave by the end of this week.
“At Bending Spoons, we’ve seen firsthand how smaller, faster-moving teams with streamlined responsibilities can have an outsized impact, and we have the same ambitions at Airtable,” Savarese wrote.
Bending Spoons, which completed its initial public offering in July, is known for acquiring established software companies like Vimeo and AOL and instituting organizational changes.
A representative from Bending Spoons declined to comment to Fast Company, but said, “The decision to part ways with members of Airtable’s pre-acquisition team wasn’t taken lightly and doesn’t reflect on the team’s excellent work.”
Amazon
Amazon employees were notified of a new round of layoffs during its Prime Big Deal Days on October 7.
The layoffs primarily affect Amazon’s Stores division, which oversees its main e-commerce business. The company cut fewer than 1,000 jobs across the U.S., India, and the United Kingdom, Reuters reported.
Jeff Bezos, founder and executive chairman of Amazon, told Fox News that the continuing layoffs are because the company over-hired during the pandemic.
“People were staying home and they were ordering, and it was an incredible, stressful period for us,” he said. “The whole team worked extremely hard and did so much, but we really grew our headcount.”