About 1,000 staff jobs are being cut at eBay, or 9 per cent of its employees, along with an unspecified number of contract workers as the ecommerce platform embarks on a second wave of redundancies in only two years.
In a blog post, Jamie Iannone, eBay’s chief executive, wrote: “While we are making progress against our strategy, our overall headcount and expenses have outpaced the growth of our business.” He told all staff to stay at home today, where they would hear from their team leaders over Zoom if they had been affected “to provide some space and privacy for these conversations”.
The company made $2.5 billion of revenue in the third quarter of 2023, up 5 per cent compared with the same period a year before, selling goods worth $18 billion. It has 132 million buyers in 190 countries. It made 500 people redundant in February last year.
Technology companies stepped up their hiring during Covid in response to increased demand for their services as pandemic lockdowns meant people spent more time online. Since then there has been a period of “right-sizing”, during which companies including Google and Meta Platforms have cut their workforces.
There were deep cuts in technology sector jobs last year, but they have continued in 2024. This month Google said it was laying off hundreds of employees working on its hardware, voice assistance and engineering teams. Amazon is cutting several hundred jobs across its Prime Video and MGM Studios divisions. According to Layoffs.FYI, which monitors the numbers, 72 technology companies have laid off 13,240 employees so far this year. In 2023, 1,186 such companies shed a total of 262,595 people jobs.
This month eBay hit the headlines when several of its staff were sent to prison and it was fined $3 million for the “criminal harassment” of two bloggers who were sent a bloody pig mask, a funeral wreath and live cockroaches.
Joshua S Levy, the acting US attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said that senior executives at eBay had become frustrated with the tone and content of the EcommerceBytes online newsletter, adding that eBay had “engaged in absolutely horrific, criminal conduct. The company’s employees and contractors put the victims through pure hell in a petrifying campaign aimed at silencing their reporting and protecting the eBay brand.”
Iannone said in a statement that the company’s behaviour had been “wrong and reprehensible” and that eBay was “committed to upholding high standards of conduct and ethics and to making things right”.
Nasdaq-quoted shares in eBay rose by 0.5 per cent, or 19 cents, to $41.60 in early trading in New York.