Adding to a painful week in gaming and tech layoffs, Discord is the latest company to announce downsizing, with a 17% cut to its staff.
CEO Jason Citron announced the layoffs in an email to employees. The move affects about 170 people across departments within the company. The primary reasons given for this round of cuts was similar to what we heard from Twitch this week: they grew too fast and need to reduce headcount in order to be the right size for their current projects. This reasoning is not uncommon lately. Unity also announced about 1,800 layoffs this week, citing a reorganization.
As for what’s next for Discord’s efforts, The Verge's report, which quoted Citron's email, says the company is aiming to become profitable for the first time this year. Citron’s message to employees began with praise for the work everyone had done at the company before noting “We grew quickly and expanded our workforce even faster, increasing by 5x since 2020. As a result, we took on more projects and became less efficient in how we operated.
Today, we are increasingly clear on the need to sharpen our focus and improve the way we work together to bring more agility to our organization. This is what largely drove the decision to reduce the size of our workforce.”
Affected employees received a severance deal that included five months of salary, plus another week for each year they spent at Discord, five months of continued benefits, and healthcare through the end of 2024.
