Yahoo is the latest tech company to announce massive layoffs.
The search engine site said on Thursday that it will be reducing its global workforce by 20% by the end of 2023.
Most of the cuts will come from the Yahoo for Business division which was the company’s ad tech department, CNN reported. The group will now be called Yahoo Advertising and with the name change, will come a 50% cut, “including nearly 1,000 employees this week,” a Yahoo spokesperson said.
“These decisions are never easy, but we believe these changes will simplify and strengthen our advertising business for the long run, while enabling Yahoo to deliver better value to our customers and partners,” Yahoo said in a statement to CNN.
Axios was the first to break the news, with Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone telling the outlet that the move is not because of financial challenges but instead are because of the changing coming to the not profitable advertising unit. The company as a whole is profitable, Axios reported, saying that it has about $8 billion in annual revenue.
About 12% of the cuts happened immediately while the remaining 8% will happen in the second half of 2023, Axios reported.
The total of jobs lost will be about 1,700 people, CBS News reported.
Several large companies have announced thousands of individual job cuts recently including Disney, 7,000 jobs; Microsoft, 10,000 jobs and Zoom, 1,300 jobs. Forbes has compiled a complete list of companies that have announced layoffs.
Overall, about 60,000 technology company workers have been let go over the past month, CBS News reported.
