Patreon is laying off 80 employees, or around 17% of its staff, and shutting operations in Dublin and Berlin. According to a statement by CEO and co-founder Jack Conte, the changes are being made because the firm is adjusting its ambitions after attempting to quickly develop during the epidemic. It is lowering the number of its teams responsible for “operations, recruitment, and other internal support services,” as well as its sales and marketing budget.
Patreon’s go-to-market, operations, finance, and personnel departments have all been let off. Workers in the United States will get three months’ severance compensation as well as two additional weeks for every half year of employment they have after their first year with the firm. European employees get a comparable offer, with three months of healthcare coverage, however, Americans will continue to receive COBRA until the end of 2022. Conte has said that he would have “several Q&A sessions” to discuss the decision.
In addition to the layoffs, Patreon is shutting two European locations and offering nine Irish engineers the opportunity to transfer to the United States.
The adjustments announced on Tuesday came after Patreon lay off its five-person security staff last week. At the time, The Verge reported that the move would “not affect our ability to continue delivering a secure and safe platform for our artists and consumers.” Conte also addressed security concerns in his Tuesday article, stating that the prior layoffs were “part of a longer-term plan to continue dispersing security responsibilities throughout our whole engineering team.” He also said that the firm will continue to collaborate with external security experts and that the new method would enhance Patreon’s investment in keeping the site secure.
Patreon is far from the only firm cutting off workers in response to economic and inflationary worries. Snap laid off around 20% of its workers earlier this month and scrapped its original series and other initiatives. This summer, Netflix, Wayfair, Rivian, Ford, Tesla, Shopify, Peloton, and a slew of cryptocurrency startups lay off hundreds, if not thousands, of employees.
