Article:
Reddit employees who lost their jobs are livid that the company is painting them as low performers: 'A cruel and dishonest way to kick a person when they're down'
Reddit insiders say a sense of dread has filled the social-media giant as the company has cut employees, one by one, in recent weeks.
Current and former staffers alike are still scrambling to piece together how many people were impacted and who among their peers has been axed, according to interviews with 10 employees who were cut and two current staffers.
Staffers who worked in community management, data science, software engineering, and creator relationships were among those who lost their jobs, insiders said. Many of those impacted added that they were confused and upset with the company not just for making cuts, but for referring to them as performance-based.
The sources spoke with Business Insider on the condition of anonymity to avoid possible retaliation from Reddit, which granted impacted staffers between 10 and 12 weeks of severance. Their identities are known to Insider.
The job cuts came as a surprise to many insiders, despite companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft culling thousands from their ranks.
“Top leadership had told us for weeks that Reddit had no plans for a layoff,” one staffer, who was let go in January, told Insider.
That narrative has not changed. Even as Reddit has cut staff, the company has said repeatedly it's not conducting layoffs like other tech companies, telling Insider (and its own employees) that staffers were let go in January strictly based on performance in the normal course of business and that it planned to rehire for most roles. Reddit has over 1,800 employees, the spokesperson said.
But insiders said Reddit's insistence that it was simply cutting low performers has sparked anger. The Reddit spokesperson declined to elaborate on how performance was assessed for these cuts.
'It makes people live in fear, and it gives everyone anxiety'
As Reddit started to let go of employees in January, some became frustrated with the company's internal and external messaging, which they said felt like spin meant to avoid the connotations of a layoff. The Reddit spokesperson disputed this characterization.
The first former staffer said they were “shocked” and “disgusted” by the company's communications, for example.
“When I saw Reddit telling the press that we were all let go due to performance reasons it really felt like a kick in the gut,” this person said. “Not only did they kill our jobs, but now t to kill our chances of getting hired elsewhere. It really feels like a cruel and dishonest way to kick a person when they're down.”
This person had been told they were performing well in their most recent rating from the company, according to a screenshot of their evaluation viewed by Insider. They said they weren't given additional feedback while being let go, beyond human resources telling them it could be tied to business needs rather than their performance.
Another who was let go told Insider that they had “never had a negative performance review” during their tenure at Reddit. Insider reviewed documentation from a 2022 performance evaluation that demonstrated their high marks.
In total, 10 former Reddit staffers who lost their jobs in January told Insider they did not consider themselves low performers based on their past feedback from the company. Three shared documentation from performance evaluations within the last year to show that the company had deemed them successful. Others said they no longer had access to documentation because it was tied to their work accounts.
“Reddit touts 'remember the human,'” said a third staffer who was recently let go, referring to one of the company's stated community values.
But during a time when thousands of tech workers across the industry are being laid off, this person continued, Reddit was letting go of employees “without even having the decency to call it what it is.”
“It's rich coming from a company focused on building communities,” a fourth terminated staffer said.
Meanwhile, for those still employed at Reddit, uncertainty reigns.
One current ffer told Insider they felt they may have been on the chopping block in January and narrowly avoided a termination.
“A lot of people were questioning what was going on,” a fifth terminated staffer said. “It makes people live in fear, and it gives everyone anxiety.”
It's still unclear when the cuts may come to an end, multiple insiders said.
Reddit has not recently filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notication, which would be required by federal law for a company laying off 50 or more employees during a 30-day period.
A group layoff is generally dened as a termination of two or more employees in connection with a restructuring plan, lack of work, or in response to business and market conditions,” said Amanda E. Thibodeau, an employment lawyer and senior attorney at Massachusetts-based law rm Morse, Barnes-Brown & Pendleton.
Reddit's plan to remove employees kicked off at an internal leadership summit last year.
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, speaking at the company's quarterly leadership summit in November, told directors and above that they should take a hard look at their teams to ensure they had the highest caliber of talent.
The initiative, referred to internally as “Scale our Culture & Talent Density,” was referenced in an email sent to employees in January. Huffman said in the email that the effort would result in some employee terminations.
Among those whose roles were reshaped were staff on Reddit's creator team. Some moved from business development jobs to work on creator services within its community-management and product teams, the Reddit spokesperson previously told Insider.
Reddit also informed employees about a cut to some benefits late last year, eight current and former staffers told Insider. It reduced the amount it would reimburse for certain employee expenditures in 2023, including trimming workplace expense reimbursement and shrinking its wellness reimbursements, known internally as the “Up to Snoo” benefits.
Other tech companies like Google and Meta have also recently cut perks.
Reddit is chasing growth and profitability in 2023
In recent weeks, Reddit — which condentially led preliminary paperwork for an initial public offering in December 2021 — has made efforts to present itself as bucking the downward trend in the tech industry.
The company just appointed its first chief revenue officer, Harold Klaje.
In an interview with Insider last month, Klaje said Reddit's business was “good,” and that it was continuing to hire and open up new markets.”We kind of ignore the macroeconomic trend,” he said.
Reddit has said it plans to continue to hire and grow its total headcount in 2023, particularly in engineering, data science, and sales. Reddit has grown considerably in recent years. Huffman said in early 2021 that Reddit planned to double its headcount that year to 1,400.
Reddit's next chapter, particularly in more challenging economic times, will call for us to focus on growing users, growing revenue, and becoming profitable,” he said in an email to employees in January.