Discord, the most used messaging service by the gaming community, has announced the layoff of 17% of its workforce. The staff cuts were announced yesterday to employees in a general meeting and in an internal memo that has been echoed by The Verge.
With this move, which will put 170 people from different departments on the street, Discord CEO Jason Citron said he intends to “refine our focus and improve the way we work together to bring more agility to our organization.”
Although Discord is not in a desperate financial situation, The Verge reports that the company is still not profitable (a situation it shares with Twitch) and is still trying to revive user growth after a surge during the pandemic.
In his note to employees, collected by the media, Citron states that Discord has been growing its workforce too quickly in recent years, an admission that has become quite common among technology industry CEOs in recent times.
“We grew quickly and expanded our workforce even faster, increasing 5 times since 2020,” wrote Citron. “As a result, we took on more projects and became less efficient in the way we operate.”
These layoffs are the largest in Discord’s history, after the messaging app laid off 4% of its workforce in August of last year. As if that weren’t enough, these layoffs add to the ongoing layoffs in the technology sector, such as those at Google and Amazon this same week.
After raising nearly $1 billion in funding, Discord has over $700 million in cash on its balance sheet and aims to be profitable this year, according to sources consulted by The Verge. The company has been considering the possibility of going public since it rejected a $12 billion acquisition offer from Microsoft in 2021, although it is currently not interested.
