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Read the internal memo from LinkedIn's CEO on layoffs and 'scaling back investments'

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LinkedIn is laying off employees, according to an internal memo viewed by Business Insider sent by CEO Daniel Shapero.

Impacted employees would receive a calendar invite within an hour of Shapero's email being sent at 7 a.m. Pacific, according to the memo. Roles include those in the Microsoft-owned company's Global Business Organization, marketing, engineering, and product teams.

It's unclear how many employees would be impacted by this round of layoffs. LinkedIn employs around 17,500 workers.

The company will also "scale back investments" in areas including marketing campaigns, vendor spend, customer events, and underutilized office space, according to the memo.

"As part of our regular business planning, we've implemented organizational changes to best position ourselves for future success," a LinkedIn spokesperson told Business Insider.

Employees in Asia and the Pacific would learn whether they were affected on Thursday, according to a separate memo. LinkedIn is also closing its office in Graz, Austria, as part of the cost-cutting.

LinkedIn's parent company, Microsoft, has also been cutting costs lately as it plans significant spending, including $190 billion in capital expenditures this year, primarily related to its AI infrastructure buildout.

Microsoft last month announced it would offer buyouts to long-serving employees. An internal document viewed by Business Insider spelled out the details of the buyout offer, including severance up to 39 weeks of base pay.

Read the memo:

"Team,

Economic opportunity is one of the societal issues of our time, and Linkedin has been and will continue to be the platform that professionals and companies turn to as they navigate the changing world of work. For us to meet this moment, we must ready ourselves to deliver a step change in impact across our products, businesses, and platforms, while continuing to operate more profitably. We need to reinvent how we work, with agile teams focused on our highest priorities, and by shifting investments toward areas such as infrastructure to fulfill our mission and vision over the long term. This requires hard prioritization and tradeoffs.

Today I'm sharing the difficult decision that I, along with our leadership team, have made to reduce roles across GBO, Marketing, Engineering and Product. If you are impacted, or proposed to be impacted in EMEA & APAC, by these changes, you will receive a calendar invite to a notification meeting within the next hour. For impacted teams, you'll learn more about your org-specific information from your leaders shortly, and updates will be added to go/CompanyExchange throughout today.

In addition to role reductions, we are scaling back investments in some areas including marketing campaigns, vendor spend, customer events, and underutilized office space, so we can focus teams on priorities that have the broadest impact with the highest ROl. You will receive details about these changes from respective functional leaders.

I want to acknowledge and thank those who will be leaving Linkedin. You have helped build LinkedIn's culture and platform into what it is today, and I hope you are proud of the lasting impact your work will continue to have on our members, customers, and colleagues.
For those staying, first and foremost, I would like to invite you to support our impacted colleagues. We will move forward together with focus and clear priorities to reach our potential as the platform that the world's professionals and companies increasingly turn to.

Thank you, again, to our teammates who are departing, and to everyone across LinkedIn who continues to show up and support each other.

Dan

BCC: All Global Employees"

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Ashley Stewart Business Insider
Ashley Stewart
Ashley Stewart reports on technology companies including Microsoft from Seattle.Get an alert whenever I publish a story.Do you work at Microsoft or have insight to share? Contact this reporter via email at astewart@jkmperu.com or Signal at +1-425-344-8242.Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.
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Alex Bitter
Alex Bitter is a senior retail reporter covering the gig economy, food, and retail. His work focuses major gig delivery and ride-hailing apps, including Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, and Walmart's Spark. He is interested in everything from what it's like to work on the apps to the companies' business strategies.Some of his recent stories feature gig workers who have been deactivated on the apps, DoorDash hiring traditional employees to make deliveries, gig workers' use of bots, and gig work expanding into new professions, such as nursing.Alex has also written about Aldi's US expansionStarbucks' turnaround efforts, and the fallout from Kraft-Heinz's budget cutting. Convenience store chain Sheetz ended its "smile policy" after his reporting.Before joining Insider in September 2020, he wrote about consumer and retail companies for S&P Global Market Intelligence. He's a graduate of the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa and grew up on the Big Island.Alex lives in the Washington, DC, area, where you can find him studying ancient coins or searching for Civil War artifacts with his metal detector in his free time.Got a tip? Reach out at abitter@jkmperu.com or via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (808) 854-4501.