Tech industry layoffs continue. The company GitHub, which is owned by Microsoft, stated today that it will be letting go of 10% of its workforce through the conclusion of its fiscal year. GitHub had roughly 3,000 employees before to this revelation, which was first reported by Fortune. Additionally, the business will transition to a remote-first culture and close all of its offices when their leases expire, in part due to the underutilization of those locations.
In order to “defend the short-term health” of the business, GitHub will also maintain the recruiting moratorium that it first announced in January and implement a number of other internal reforms.
“We announced a number of challenging but essential choices and budget realignments to both safeguard the future viability of our company and enable us to fund our long-term goal. You may read our CEO’s complete letter to staff, which includes further information on these changes, below, according to a business representative.
GitHub is also switching to Teams for its video conferencing needs, which is an unorthodox move for a firm that has prided itself on keeping independent of its corporate owner. Additionally, it is extending its laptop renewal cycle from three to four years as a further indicator of cost-cutting measures.
“Even though our whole leadership team thoughtfully discussed this move and reached consensus, as CEO I ultimately have the final say. We will approach this time with the highest care for every Hubber, I understand this will be challenging for you all, GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke wrote in an email to the company’s workforce today.
He says that with a heavy emphasis on AI, he wants the business to become the “developer-first engineering system for the world of tomorrow.” That would not be shocking given GitHub’s recent emphasis on its Copilot and Microsoft’s general drive towards AI-everything.
Message from the CEO of GitHub to Staff on February 9, 2023
Today, we’re announcing a number of tough choices that will protect our company’s short-term health while also enabling us to make investments in our long-term vision, such as saying goodbye to some Hubbers and implementing significant budgetary realignments. I want to start by being very transparent about why we are making these decisions and what it means for the future of GitHub out of tremendous respect for Hubbers.
Every firm needs to see sustained growth. This implies that GitHub will continue to support more effective developers everywhere and adapt fast as new possibilities to serve our clients arise. We currently have 100M developers living here, and we need to establish a developer-first engineering system for the future. With the launch of GitHub Copilot, our most popular product to date, the age of AI has here, and we are paving the way for this transformation. We have a fantastic opportunity to quickly develop an AI-powered, integrated GitHub. In order to support our clients on a daily basis, we must continue to help them grow and prosper with GitHub, hasten and make it easier for them to use the cloud. This will take intense concentration and adjustments to how and whereOur limited resources are invested.
Starting now, we’ll focus on areas of all of our products where we can most effectively influence these objectives and the demands of our consumers. Unfortunately, these adjustments will cause GitHub’s staff to be reduced by up to 10% through the end of FY23. As we re-align the business through the end of FY23, some Hubbers will receive alerts today, and others will follow. I still have the hiring freeze that I declared on January 18.
Although the whole leadership team has thoughtfully discussed and agreed upon this action, as CEO I ultimately have the final say. I am aware that you will all find this challenging, and we will approach this time with the highest care for each and every Hubber. To ensure those impacted Hubbers are aware of the transition compensation and COBRA/COBRA equivalent (outside the US) that will be offered, we will talk with them. Benefits for support with career transition services will also be provided.
We have also been working to increase our operational effectiveness and commercial scalability. Making the transition to a fully remote GitHub is one of our decisions. The fact that we have made this choice while having relatively low utilisation rates in all of our locations worldwide is proof of the effectiveness of our long-standing remote-first culture. We won’t be leaving our offices right once, but we will work to close them all as soon as their leases expire or we can do so operationally. As soon as the workplace details and transition strategies are set, we’ll let you know.
We are considering ways to cut operating expenses even more. In the upcoming months, we will provide you with more information and transition plans, but for now, I wanted to share two choices with you: I As of right away, we will switch from three to four years between laptop refreshes. ii) In order to save money and streamline internal company and client communications, we will switch to Microsoft Teams exclusively for video conferencing. The transition will be finished by September 1, 2023. Slack will continue to be our go-to tool for daily collaboration.
Finally, I want to express my sincere gratitude to each and every Hubber for their amazing talents, which have enabled GitHub to develop to where we are now. Every change you’ve made to GitHub and every day you’ve put in work have made it the biggest and most significant software development platform. We appreciate your commitment, tenacity, and enthusiasm in empowering millions of software engineers worldwide.
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