Over a thousand jobs are going at eBay as ecommerce giant admits it grew too fast

eBay has announced plans to cut around a thousand jobs as the company looks to ensure its “long-term success”.

An announcement by company CEO Jamie Iannone confirmed that “approximately 1,000 roles,” or the equivalent of around 9% of the company’s full-time workforce, would be eliminated as it strives for better cost efficiency.

The ecommerce giant claims to have been on a transformative journey over the past three years, since the pandemic, making shifts in user experiences and driving customer satisfaction in certain areas that have received investment.

eBay announces large-scale layoffs

Though layoffs have continued into 2024, the final weeks of 2022 and the early part of 2023 were considered to be the most serious. A total of more than 262,000 tech workers were made redundant in the 2023 calendar year (via layoffs.fyi), with some of the most considerable reductions accounting for around 10-15% of companies’ workforces.

eBay’s decision to reduce its headcount by 9% is pretty significant, even by 2023’s standards, however it’s unclear precisely what percentage of all of the company’s workers is affected, given that the 9% relates to full-time workers only.

The announcement confirmed that, despite continued consumer spend, eBay’s spend has become a problem: “our overall headcount and expenses have outpaced the growth of our business.”

Leaders have been told to communicate the workforce changes directly via eBay’s preferred video conferencing platform, Zoom. In a bid to soften the blow, the company asked all US workers to work from home on January 24 to allow “space and privacy for these conversations.”

TechRadar Pro asked eBay to confirm more details about the layoffs, including any information regarding a redundancy package to support affected workers. The company did not immediately respond.

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