Stack Overflow, a popular forum where millions of software developers get their questions answered, has reduced its workforce by 40 employees, or 15% of its total headcount, because of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on its business, a spokesperson tells Business Insider.
Most of the affected employees were furloughed, meaning they can keep their health insurance and other benefits. Some, however, were laid off. The reductions were announced to the company on Tuesday, the spokesperson said.
The Stack Overflow spokesperson says its Talent business, which helps companies recruit and hire developers, has taken a hit amid the ongoing crisis, as hiring slows down across the tech industry. The spokesperson says that the company's short-term priority is growing its paid product and advertising businesses so that the furloughed employees can come back to work sooner rather than later.
"We took these actions with great care and only after assessing all other options," a Stack Overflow spokesperson told Business Insider. "We did this in order to ensure that we can serve our customers and community in the long-run."
Stack Overflow has said that it sees over 50 million monthly unique visitors and over 255 million monthly visits. As Business Insider reported in October, the company boasts an annualized revenue run rate of $80 million.
Previously, Stack Overflow CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar told Business Insider that in addition to its popular developer Q&A forum, the company is focusing on growing its paid, premium products like Talent, Ads, and Teams, which allows companies to build their own versions of Stack Overflow for internal use to share knowledge.
Stack Overflow has raised a total of $70 million from investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Spark Capital, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' investment fund Bezos Expeditions, according to PitchBook.
Read Stack Overflow's full statement below:
"Given the impact of COVID-19 on Stack Overflow's Talent business, one of our three business lines, we made the difficult decision to reduce our global workforce by approximately 15%. Most of the affected employees were furloughed, except for employees and contractors in regions where furloughs were unfortunately not an option.
We took these actions with great care and only after assessing all other options. We did this in order to ensure that we can serve our customers and community in the long-run. With our core SaaS business, Teams, and our Advertising business growing, our priority moving forward is accelerating that growth so that we can have our colleagues rejoin our team as soon as viable."
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