LinkedIn lays off 716 employees, to shut down jobs app in China

Microsoft-owned LinkedIn announced on Monday that it would lay off 716 employees and discontinue its local jobs app ‘’InCareer’’ in China soon. 

‘’Over the years we’ve had to make hard decisions to ensure we were setting the company up to deliver on our vision, and I’m sharing one of those decisions today,’’ said LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky in a letter to employees. ‘’As we guide LinkedIn through this rapidly changing landscape, we are making changes to our Global Business Organization (GBO) and our China strategy that will result in a reduction of roles for 716 employees,’’ he added.

LinkedIn first launched its local jobs app InCareer in China back in December 2019, just after Microsoft said it would shut down LinkedIn China due to “significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China’’.

‘’We’ll focus our China strategy on assisting companies operating in China to hire, market, and train abroad,’’ Roslansky said. ‘’This will involve maintaining our Talent, Marketing, and Learning businesses, while phasing out InCareer, our local jobs app in China, by August 9, 2023. 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.‘’

While the CEO added that they expect the global economic conditions to remain challenging, the company is now planning to reorganize and align its teams, and become more ‘agile’ to minimize its costs and grow its revenue.

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As part of these plans, LinkedIn will lay off more than 700 of its employees, but also open up more than 250 new roles starting on May 15.

Due to rising costs and the global economic slowdown, many tech companies continued to announce major layoffs this year, including LinkedIn’s parent Microsoft, Google’s parent Alphabet, and the social media giant Meta.