The latest digital company to lay off employees is LinkedIn. The social media network on Tuesday cut 716 positions from its 20,000-person workforce.
The business-focused social media platform will gradually stop supporting its local employment app in China.
The move, according to a letter from the company’s CEO Ryan Roslansky, was made to streamline the business’s operations.
Companies including Amazon, Microsoft, the parent company of LinkedIn, and Alphabet have all announced layoffs in the past six months.
“With the market and customer demand fluctuating more, and to serve emerging and growth markets more effectively, we are expanding the use of vendors,” Mr Roslansky wrote.
He also said the changes would result in creating 250 new jobs which employees affected by the cuts in its sales, operations and support teams would be eligible to apply.
After mostly withdrawing from China in 2021, citing a “challenging environment”, the remaining app called InCareers will also be phased out by 9 August. InCareers only covers the Chinese market.
According to a LinkedIn spokesman, the company will continue to have personnel in China to assist Chinese businesses in finding and training workers abroad.
The only significant Western social media network present in China is LinkedIn.
The company had made a commitment to follow Chinese government regulations when it was founded in 2014 in order to conduct business there.
In a letter to Ryan Roslansky, CEO of LinkedIn, and Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, at the time, US senator Rick Scott referred to the action as “gross appeasement and an act of submission to Communist China.”