Microsoft-owned GitHub has reportedly laid off 142 engineering roles in its India operations, according to a recent report from Business Today. The entire engineering team in GitHub India was asked to leave, and the layoff was not based on employee performance. The affected employees have been given two months’ pay as severance, but they were also required to sign a strict Non-Disclosure Agreement in lieu of the severance benefits.
Last month, GitHub announced that it would let go of 10% of its workforce globally as part of cost-cutting measures. GitHub reportedly has over 3,000 employees worldwide, and in February, it announced that it would freeze hiring until further notice.
GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke justified the layoffs and other measures taken by the company in an email sent to employees. He stated that the measures were “designed to protect the short-term health of our business while also granting us the capacity to invest in our long-term strategy.”
GitHub was acquired by Microsoft in 2018, and in October last year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that GitHub’s revenue was at $1 billion annually. In January, Nadella said that Microsoft would be laying off 10,000 employees by the third quarter of FY23, which is less than 5% of the company’s workforce.
However, Microsoft is not the only tech giant to announce layoffs recently. In January, Salesforce announced that it would be reducing its workforce by 10%, or nearly 8,000 employees. Amazon has also announced two rounds of layoffs that will affect a total of 27,000 people. The company announced 18,000 layoffs in January and an additional 9,000 layoffs last week.
Similarly, Meta Platforms Inc., the parent company of Facebook, recently announced that it would be cutting roughly 10,000 jobs over the coming months as part of its second wave of mass layoffs. The company stated that the move was an effort to become more efficient in a difficult economy.
These measures taken by various tech companies have been difficult but necessary, according to their respective CEOs. As the global economy continues to recover from the pandemic, many companies are still facing financial challenges and are having to make tough decisions to remain viable in the long term.