After Google, Byju is the latest company to fire hundreds of employees. The edtech company has already conducted a layoff process back in October 2022 and the new round reduces the workforce by 15 percent. This is around 1,000 employees across departments, which is in addition to the 2,500 workers it laid off a few months back.
In the latest round, the company has fired 300 employees in the Engineering team and the Logistics team strength has dropped to 50 percent if we also count October’s layoff process, people familiar with the matter told MoneyControl. It is also being said that the Byju removed all the freshers too. The impacted employees were not sent an official email as this gets leaked online and so, the company decided to fire people over normal or WhatsApp calls.
The cited source reported that one of the employees who missed his leader’s call learned that his colleagues were all laid off over WhatsApp calls and several people like the company’s VP, team’s director, and HR were also present. He also suggested that layoff was not based on performance or key area responsibilities of employees and this was done for baseless reasons.
“They were informed that since the team is not generating enough revenues, they will have to be let go, which is funny because generating revenue is not part of OKRs (objectives and key results) in the first place,” the laid-off employee said.
In one of the calls, Byju explained to employees that the company is having some financial difficulties and so it decided to reduce headcounts to preserve cash for future. This is something that a lot of tech companies across the industry are doing. Though, a few companies like Intel have avoided mass layoff by announcing a cut in employee salaries. This has been done at all levels and the pay cut is up to 25 percent.
Read More: After SACKING Employees, This Tech Company Cut Its Top Executives’ Salaries By Up To 25%. Deets Here
“My team lead started out on a really positive note congratulating us for our contribution over the last few months. She beat around the bush and then said that in the last few months, the company has been going through financial difficulties, and they are sort of rethinking the direction. So one of the decisions is essentially letting people go. After that, the HR took over,” another Byju employee said.
The report says that several laid-off employees are being forced to send a resignation email to the company. Byju is reportedly convincing the impacted people by saying that layoff won’t look good on their portfolio, and so, employees should directly resign from their posts. This also means that they won’t be entitled for the benefits that a laid off employee might be getting, as per the report.
