Pinterest Sacks Engineers for Tracking Staff Job Cuts
Pinterest has recently made headlines after sacking two engineers for improperly monitoring which employees were laid off during a recent wave of job cuts. This decision highlights the ongoing challenges in the tech industry regarding layoffs and employee privacy.
– Pinterest’s CEO, Bill Ready, announced in an internal memo that the company is doubling down on an AI-forward approach. This pivot has resulted in significant workforce reductions.
– The recent layoffs are expected to affect approximately 15% of Pinterest’s employees, amounting to around 700 positions, although the specific teams impacted were not disclosed.
– According to a company spokesperson, the two engineers created custom scripts that accessed confidential company information to pinpoint the names and locations of all employees who were laid off. This action represented a serious violation of both company policy and the privacy of their former colleagues.
– The scripts were designed to interact with internal tools used by employees, specifically monitoring platforms like Slack. This allowed for alerts on which employee accounts were being deactivated, thereby revealing details about those affected by the layoffs.
– The identities of the two dismissed engineers have not been disclosed, and efforts to contact them have been unsuccessful.
The tech sector has been experiencing significant workforce reductions over the past few years.
– In the same week Pinterest announced layoffs, Amazon cut approximately 16,000 jobs as part of its second round of redundancies within three months.
– Earlier this year, Meta also laid off several hundred employees, joining other major players like Google and Microsoft in workforce contractions.
– According to Layoffs.fyi, an organization that tracks tech layoffs, an estimated 700,000 individuals have lost their jobs across the industry in the last four years.
As the tech landscape continues to evolve, it remains crucial for companies to handle layoffs with transparency and care for employee privacy. The actions taken by Pinterest’s engineers serve as a reminder of the importance of ethical conduct in the workplace, particularly during challenging times.