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  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Twilio more than decimates staff, CEO says it grew too fast

(2022/09/14)


Twilio has announced a restructuring effort that will end in an 11 percent cut of its workforce.

In [1]an SEC filing , the communication services provider said it was acting "to reduce operating costs, improve operating margins, and shift the company's selling capacity to accelerate software sales." The San Francisco-based biz expects the more-than-decimation plan to cost it between $70 and $90 million.

In a [2]letter to employees filed with the SEC and sent to "Twilions" earlier today, Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson said the layoffs come largely as a result of the company growing too fast and becoming bloated, losing its focus on its priorities, and considering whether or not its "investments are getting us where we need to go."

[3]

"Today's layoffs are about aligning our investments more squarely with our priorities, as well as running our company more efficiently overall," Lawson said.

[4]

[5]

Per the email, the cuts are mainly centered around research and development, administration, and go-to-market, "where customers can succeed without as much human intervention," Lawson said.

2022 hasn't been a smooth year for Twilio, with several incidents that have sliced the company's reputation: some of its workers were allegedly caught using business knowledge to commit [6]insider trades , its private GitHub repositories were [7]compromised and cloned , and cybercriminals [8]successfully phished some of its employees in a [9]wider attack on tech outfits.

[10]

Twilio was further caught up in the [11]post-pandemic growth stock crash that saw it and [12]other companies that grew rapidly during the shift to remote work lose a lot of value. At its peak in February 2021, Twilio's stock stood at $435.29 apiece; as of writing it's down to $79.

[13]Twilio, Cloudflare just two of 135 orgs targeted by Oktapus phishing campaign

[14]1,900 Signal users exposed: Twilio attacker 'explicitly' looked for certain numbers

[15]Cloudflare: Someone tried to pull the Twilio phishing tactic on us too

[16]Apple's guy in charge of stopping insider trading guilty of … insider trading

"Twilio has grown at an astonishing rate over the past couple years. It was too fast, and without enough focus on our most important company priorities. I take responsibility for those decisions, as well as the difficult decision to do this layoff," Lawson said in his letter.

As has been the case in many other [17]tech layoffs recently, affected Twilio employees will still be paid for a time. In this case, Twilio will give all employees globally 12 weeks of pay, plus one additional week for every year at the company. Twilio employees are also paid in stock, and will receive the full value of the company's next stock vest.

As of [18]June 2022 , Twilio had 8,510 employees, 936 of whom would lose their jobs. Since the layoff announcement this morning, and as of writing, Twilio stock has risen 12 percent. ®

Speaking of layoffs... Patreon, which collects subscriptions for content makers, has [19]axed 17 percent of its workforce. The biz, which was valued at $4 billion last year, will lay off 80 members of its Operations, Finance, People, and Go-to-Market teams, as well as closing its Berlin, Germany, and Dublin, Ireland, offices.

This comes after Patreon separately laid off its five-strong security team last week.

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[1] https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0001447669/000119312522244315/d380990d8k.htm

[2] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1447669/000119312522244315/d380990dex991.htm

[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YyJO-VzD-6dkP@N84DcatAAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0

[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YyJO-VzD-6dkP@N84DcatAAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YyJO-VzD-6dkP@N84DcatAAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[6] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/29/twilio_insider_trading/

[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/05/twilio_codecov_attack/

[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/08/twilio_phishing_attack/

[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/25/twilio_cloudflare_oktapus_phishing/

[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YyJO-VzD-6dkP@N84DcatAAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[11] https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/05/06/why-twilio-stock-crashed-32-in-april/

[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/02/tech_layoff_hiring/

[13] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/25/twilio_cloudflare_oktapus_phishing/

[14] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/16/twilio_breach_fallout_signal_user/

[15] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/10/cloudflare_twilio_phishing/

[16] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/01/apple_lawyer_insider_trading/

[17] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/16/ninefold_increase_in_startup_layoffs/

[18] https://www.twilio.com/press/releases/twilio-announces-second-quarter-2022-results

[19] https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack

[20] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/



Who?

Yet Another Anonymous coward

Can't remember who they are or what they do.

However I welcomes tech companies now having their workers draw lots and have 10% beaten to death by the other 90%.

Re: Who?

Lon24

Today I installed another copy of Twilio Authy. This generates the codes used to login to 2FA sites. It's a non-Google version of Google Authenticator and so helpful to those who wish to keep some of their computing outside the ChoctFact orbit.

It's free so I'm not helping to pay their workforce.

Re: Who?

Anonymous Coward

Authy, yes; they also produce a programmable messaging platform (voice, sms, taskrouters, call center type stuff). Decent, but nearly impossible to navigate their horrendous menu system.

Nice to see ...

SImon Hobson

Nice to see, for a change, someone who still remembers what "decimate" actually means. English teachers up and down the land can rejoice !

Written after another day of a technical course for ${day_job}, with a lecturer with a passion for correctness in technical/scientific communication.

Re: Nice to see ...

Yet Another Anonymous coward

Although technically only if they kill them - tough on the workers but makes classics teachers happy

Just a few of the perfect excuses for having some strawberry shortcake.
Pick one.

(1) It's less calories than two pieces of strawberry shortcake.
(2) It's cheaper than going to France.
(3) It neutralizes the brownies I had yesterday.
(4) Life is short.
(5) It's somebody's birthday. I don't want them to celebrate alone.
(6) It matches my eyes.
(7) Whoever said, "Let them eat cake." must have been talking to me.
(8) To punish myself for eating dessert yesterday.
(9) Compensation for all the time I spend in the shower not eating.
(10) Strawberry shortcake is evil. I must help rid the world of it.
(11) I'm getting weak from eating all that healthy stuff.
(12) It's the second anniversary of the night I ate plain broccoli.