Reddit lays off 5% of its workers

Reddit is laying off 5% of its workers in order to cut costs and restructure. About 90 employees will lose their jobs as a result.

CEO Steve Huffman announced the companywide layoffs in an email to the social media company’s staff on Tuesday, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“The team and I reviewed and adjusted our plan through the end of 2024,” Huffman wrote. “We’ve had a solid first half of the year, and this restructuring will position us to carry that momentum into the second half and beyond.”

He added that the goal of the restructuring was to break even in 2024 and move money around for different projects’ budgets.

He added that the company would only hire an additional 100 employees this year after initially planning to add 300.

The San Francisco-based company — which is still private — is estimated to have around 2,000 employees.

However, it’s unclear at present how the layoffs (and fewer hires) will effect the operations and functionality of the well-trafficked website.

The layoffs come less than two years after Reddit announced it would file for an initial public offering, which has still not happened amid economic uncertainty.

In April, Reddit announced it would soon start charging companies for API access since the platform’s discussions, which amount to 18 years worth of content, are being mined to train AI chatbots.

Reddit is far from the only tech company to start slashing staff.

About 148,000 job cuts have been announced by tech companies so far in 2023, according to Crunchbase.

Since last fall, Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp), Twitter, Amazon, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft and Spotify have cut tens of thousands of jobs.

Outside of tech, industry giants like McDonald’s and Disney have announced large-scale layoffs of their own.