LinkedIn to cut 716 jobs and shut down Chinese app InCareer

LinkedIn will cut more than 700 jobs and shut down its China jobs app in the latest round of tech sector redundancies.

Ryan Roslansky, chief executive of the Microsoft-owned professional networking platform, announced on Monday in a letter to staff that 716 roles would go as part of changes aimed at responding to economic conditions and making the business more agile.

“With the market and customer demand fluctuating more, and to serve emerging and growth markets more effectively, we are expanding the use of vendors,” he said. “We are also removing layers, reducing management roles and broadening responsibilities to make decisions more quickly.”

A LinkedIn spokesperson said these vendors were “external partners” who would take on new and existing work.Roslansky said the product and engineering teams would be responsible for the technology roadmap of the company while the business productivity team would be phased out and partly integrated into other parts of the business.

He said 250 new jobs would be created in operations, new business and account management teams from 15 May.

LinkedIn has about 20,000 employees globally.

The company’s China-based jobs app, InCareer, would shut from 9 August, with the company to focus on helping companies in China to hire, market and train abroad, Roslansky said. Jobs in product, engineering, corporate, sales and marketing in China would go.

“Though InCareer experienced some success in the past year thanks to our strong China-based team, it also encountered fierce competition and a challenging macroeconomic climate,” Roslansky said.

The LinkedIn platform shut down in China in 2021, citing a “challenging operating environment” amid reports that Chinese internet regulators wanted more oversight. Facebook and Twitter were already banned in China, while Google pulled out in 2010.

Roslansky said US-based employees would be entitled to severance pay, continuing health coverage and career transition services; for those outside the US it would depend on their countries’ requirements.

In the past six months more than 270,000 tech jobs globally have been cut, according to Layoffs.fyi, which has been tracking the fallout. LinkedIn’s parent company, Microsoft, has cut 10,000 jobs while Facebook’s parent company Meta has shed 21,000. Google has cut 12,000 jobs while Amazon has laid off 27,000 workers.

With Reuters