SEPTEMBER 15, 2023 — 237 EMPLOYEES TARGETED
The company has announced that it will lay off 27% of its workforce, or 237 employees.
According to Howie Liu, Airtable’s founder and CEO, “The market has tipped towards favoring efficient growth over growth at all costs. We must operate the business in a more mature way that puts us on a path to become a public company and to have durability and efficiency in how we grow.”
“I let myself get caught in the hyper-competitive environment at that time. We had the capital and said, ‘Let's hyper-scale; let's recruit as many smart people as we can and just throw them into the business and see what they can do. It’s a sickening feeling. I made the decisions that got us here, but it would be even worse to not make a change because if business continues on in this way, it would not be ideal for anyone––the employees, the investors, or the company.”
DECEMBER 20, 2022 — Original post…
San Francisco, California-based Airtable, a technology company offering a cloud-based collaboration service that combines a spreadsheet with a database, has announced a 20% reduction in its workforce.
The reduction will impact 254 employees across business development, engineering and other teams.
Airtable founder and CEO Howie Liu noted, “We’ve rapidly expanded and executed on multiple fronts. At the time, I believed we could successfully pursue all of them in parallel. However, in taking a hard look at our efforts in the current market environment, we’ve identified the teams best positioned to capture the opportunity in enterprise in order to bring complete focus, alignment and accountability in our execution.”
“We have more than enough runway to get to profitability and then some. We’re a private company, so we’re not under the gun to show short-term results of profitability — so we’re very, very fortunate to not be under so much pressure and we would never gloat about that, but I do think it gives us a unique position.”
Change is coming. There will always be a tomorrow, no matter how much you may try to ignore it. There are no guarantees in life or promises for a bright future. We see good people being laid off through no fault of their own. Just because something bad hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it won't. It can happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere. No one is guaranteed to wake up tomorrow and still have a job by evening. Are you now wondering, Am I Next?
