Microsoft-owned GitHub lays off over 140 employees in India

Microsoft-owned open source developer platform and code repository GitHub has laid off 142 people from its engineering team as well as some from its Programs and Product team in India, according to people aware of the matter. According to some sources, 180 people have been affected in these layoffs. This comes as pressure mounts on Big Tech firms as layoffs continue to ravage the sector as a result of the slowdown in post-pandemic demand as companies seek to cut costs.

Microsoft acquired GitHub for $7.5 billion in stock in 2018, when the platform had 28 million developers. As of January 2023, the company has more than 100 million developers.

The layoffs at GitHub were first reported by Gergley Orosz, who runs a newsletter called The Pragmatic Engineer.

An affected employee who requested anonymity told Moneycontrol that employees across offices in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and New Delhi were affected, and only the sales and marketing department was unaffected. “Most employees from the engineering, programs and product in India have been asked to resign,” they said.

The company informed employees early on March 27 that an urgent call was scheduled for 9 a.m. that day.

“There were separate calls and the global lead of each team informed about the decision. All our team leaders from India were also asked to move on from the company. We were asked to resign by 5 pm yesterday [March 27],” said another former employee who did not want to be identified.

The company has offered employees two months of salary and separate severance pay based on their experience and length of service with GitHub.

GitHub also said laid-off staff’s salary and severance payments will be disbursed on the condition that they resign voluntarily by 5 pm on March 27, as per an employee.

According to one of the employees quoted above, GitHub is conducting layoffs in an effort to reduce business costs. “The lead just said your role has been eliminated, read out a few FAQs (frequently asked queries) and said the HR (human resource) representative will connect with you one on one. They did not take any questions from us,” they said.

“Most of GitHub’s main operations are not in India. But there were few teams like NPM packages and GitHub education, which were almost completely based out of India,” an employee said.

A third employee impacted by the layoffs corroborated the account above. “It was really harsh that the company asked us to send in our resignation before we even could digest the news. They should have announced it as a layoff, as it is not our fault,” he said.

In addition to India, LinkedIn posts suggest that the layoffs have affected teams in the United States.

In February, CEO Thomas Dohmke informed employees that the company would be reducing its workforce by 10 percent through the end of FY23. The company also planned to close its offices as their leases expire as part of its "necessary decisions and budgetary realignments." Additionally, the company has had a hiring freeze in place since January 18.

On the basis of this announcement, GitHub employees in India anticipated some reductions, but did not anticipate that the entire engineering team would be laid off.

A GitHub spokesperson told Moneycontrol that the present workforce reductions are a part of the announcement made by the company in February.

“As part of the reorganization plan shared in February, workforce reductions were made today as part of difficult but necessary decisions and realignments to both protect the health of our business in the short term and grant us the capacity to invest in our long-term strategy moving forward,” the spokesperson said.

On January 18, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that the company would be laying off 10,000 employees by the third quarter of FY23, which he said is less than 5 percent of the company’s workforce. “These decisions are difficult, but necessary,” Nadella said.

Apart from Microsoft, other tech giants too have been slashing jobs with companies even doing two rounds.

In January, Salesforce announced it was reducing 10 percent of its workforce, or nearly 8,000 employees, with the CEO Marc Benioff attributing it to hiring too many people during the pandemic-fuelled demand. According to an interview that COO Brian Millham gave to Bloomberg this week, more job cuts could be in store for Salesforce.

Amazon has announced two rounds of layoffs that will affect 27,000 people. The company announced 18,000 layoffs in January, primarily in Amazon Stores and People, Experience, and Technology (PXT), and a further 9,000 layoffs last week, which are expected to affect employees in departments including AWS, PXT, Advertising, and Twitch.

Meta announced its second round of layoffs earlier this month, which are expected to affect 10,000 jobs, as well as not hiring for 5,000 open positions. This came on the heels of its first announcement in November 2022, where it had announced for 13 percent of its workforce, or 11,000 jobs.