Twilio to lay off 17% of its workforce in second round as tech layoffs top 100,000

Twilio is laying off 17% of its workforce as tech layoffs top 100,000 in the first two months of 2023. The Cloud communications provider announced on Monday it was eliminating about 17% of its staff and closing some offices. This is the company’s second round of lay off in less than six months.

In September 2022, Twilio laid off 11% of its total workforce as part of a major restructuring plan, according to an SEC filing published Wednesday. The company had 7,867 employees as of Dec. 31, 2021.

“On September 12, 2022, the compensation and talent management committee of the board of directors of Twilio Inc. (the “Company”) approved a restructuring plan that is designed to reduce operating costs, improve operating margins, and shift the Company’s selling capacity to accelerate software sales (collectively, the “Restructuring Plan”). The Restructuring Plan includes elimination of approximately 11% of the Company’s current workforce.”

In a separate letter to employees, Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson said the company decided to lay off staff in order to run more efficiently and to align the company’s investments with its priorities. He said the decision was “extremely difficult,” but also “wise and necessary.”

“Twilio has grown at an astonishing rate over the past couple of years. It was too fast, and without enough focus on our most important company priorities,” Lawson said in the letter. “I take responsibility for those decisions, as well as the difficult decision to do this layoff.”

Twilio is the latest in a series of tech companies to announce staff cuts. In recent months, tech companies, crypto exchanges, financial firms, and banks have reduced their headcount and slowed hiring as global economic growth weakens due to looming recession, inflation, higher interest rates, the energy crisis in Europe, and the ongoing war in Ukraine.

The layoff announcement is the latest in a series of job cuts in the tech industry. Last week, the world’s largest domain registrar GoDaddy also laid off 8% of its workforce, or about 530 employees amid the global economic slowdown. During the same week, Zoom announced it was laying off 15% of its workforce, or about 1,300 employees as its stock fell from its peak of $559 to $85. A day earlier, Dell announced plans to lay off 6,650 workers. In January, Google also said it plans to lay off more than 12,000 workers, while Microsoft revealed it plans to cut 10,000 employees and Salesforce announced plans to lay off 7,000 workers.

With less than two months into 2023, more than 340 tech companies have laid off 101,807 tech workers, according to Layoffs.FYI, a site that has been tracking all tech layoffs using data compiled from public reports.

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