The developer operations (DevOps) giant, GitLab, is the latest tech company to announce a round of layoffs. It was revealed today that the company is downsizing its workforce by 7 per cent.
So far, it has been a difficult year for the technology industry, with most of the big tech companies announcing staff layoffs and cost cuts amid unpredictable macro economic factors and the possibility of recession. These companies include Microsoft, Alphabet Inc and Salesforce among others. Similar to all these companies, GitLab has also decided to layoff employees due to the economic climate, and particularly because its customers have considerably reduced their own software spending.
GitLab co-founder and CEO Sid Sijbrandij wrote in a letter to employee that it also published to its website, “The current macroeconomic environment is tough, and as a result, companies are still spending but they are taking a more conservative approach to software investments and are taking more time to make purchasing decisions,”
The software developer went public on the Nasdaq some 16 months ago, and its shares haven’t performed too well in the months that followed. The remote-first company currently has a market value of approximately $7 billion, which has substantially reduced from its $15 billion IPO day valuation and its $19 billion peak a few months later.
Most recently, the company’s reported workforce was 1,630, as revealed in a 10-K report last year, which signifies that the round of redundancies will affect around 114 people, that is, 7 per cent of the workforce, though that particular figure is dependent on its actual headcount as of today.
“I had hoped reprioritizing our spending would be enough to withstand the growing global economic downturn,” Sijbrandij wrote. “Unfortunately, we need to take further steps and match our pace of spending with our commitment to responsible growth.”
In terms of severance, Sijbrandij said that all staff affected will receive pay through the “transition period,” plus a single payout equivalent to around four months base salary. He further mentioned that the staff will continue to have access to healthcare for six months in locations where that is part of their job package.
An open-core company, GitLab Inc., that operates GitLab, a DevOps software package that can develop, secure, and operate software. The open source software project was created by Ukrainian developer Dmitriy Zaporozhets and Dutch developer Sytse Sijbrandij. GitLab Inc. was founded in 2014 and since then, it has promoted remote work, and is known to be among the largest all-remote companies in the world.
