The company assured that consultations will be held with employee representatives regarding the proposed layoffs; In addition, it will pay five months of severance to the dismissed employees.
The wave of mass layoffs from technology companies seems to be going on forever. Google, Amazon, Meta, as well as several technology giants, have recently announced the layoffs of some of their workers, due to the major economic crisis taking place around the world.
HubSpot, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based sales and marketing software company, became the latest technology company to reduce its workforce. It announced Tuesday that 500 jobs, or about 7% of its workforce, would be cut.
HubSpot Announcement
Employees were given roughly 15-minute notice that the layoffs were imminent, according to an email about the HubSpot staff cuts from HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan. The CEO, appointed head of the company in August 2021, called the layoffs “the most difficult decision we’ve had to make in HubSpot’s history.”
The reason behind the move is a familiar one, with Rangan pointing to last year’s “turn to the downside” following a pocket of prosperity and overzealous hiring during the pandemic. The layoffs will be completed by the end of this quarter for the company. Shares in HubSpot were up 1.3% as of Wednesday morning.
Through an official statement, HubSpot assured that consultations will be held with employee representatives regarding the proposed layoffs, “as HubSpot made the most difficult decision, we were forced to say goodbye to some of our family members”
In an email to HubSpot employees globally, Rangan said that while business had prospered during the pandemic, things took a downward turn last year:
“We went into 2022 anticipating that growth would slow from 2021, but we experienced a faster slowdown than we expected.”
In Rangan’s words, inflation, currency volatility, as well as tighter client budgets, were some of the reasons why 2022 was such a challenging year for the company.
Colombia, among the Countries Most Affected by Layoffs
According to information published by Bloomberg online, Colombia is one of the countries affected by the layoffs from HubSpot, since these were confirmed in the country.
“You get up, have some coffee, go jogging, and wait for a day to close business; it is usually adrenaline, a positive attitude, and the desire to make things happen. Today was different, today was not special. Without a doubt, the worst day of my life at a professional level”, said HubSpot’s country manager for Latam, Camilo Clavijo on his social networks.
HubSpot announced that it will provide five months of severance to terminated employees, plus an additional week for each year employees have worked with HubSpot, up to a total severance period of seven months.
In 2023, the layoffs have made headlines: about 18,000 employees at Amazon, 12,000 at Google parent company Alphabet, 10,000 at Microsoft, 8,000 at Salesforce, 450 at Informatica, 400 at ShareChat, and about 3,900 cuts at IBM.
By Audy Castaneda
