The technology industry has been hit hard by layoffs this year, and GrubHub is the latest to cut staff. The company’s CEO Howard Migdal announced today that the company will be letting go of roughly 400 employees, or 15 percent of its corporate workforce. The layoffs will supposedly help Grubhub stay “competitive” with the market.
He said, “Over the last few months, I met with Grubhub teams to learn about the business from the ground up; I spoke to restaurants and diners to understand their needs – and challenges – when using our service.” Impacted employees will be “notified over the next several hours.” Migdal goes on to say that he understands that this will be a difficult time for all employees. For those who are keeping their jobs, he claims that more details about “our future together” will surface in the coming days.
Back in March of this year, Grubhub’s then CEO Adam DeWitt announced that he would be stepping down at the start of May amid increasing economic pressure. With Migdal as the new CEO, it’s not terribly surprising that his first move would be to try and reduce operating costs due to the continued economic pressure.
Grubhub isn’t the first and likely isn’t the last delivery service to start to cut employees. Late last year, DoorDash announced that it would be laying off nearly 1,300 employees due to “operating expenses.” The company’s CEO Tony Xu said that DoorDash increased hiring during the pandemic and that operating expenses would continue to outgrow sales.
The big difference between DoorDash and Grubhub is that the former offered those who were laid off 13 weeks of compensation along with four weeks of severance pay. Grubhub’s announcement today did not mention any sort of compensation or severance pay for those who are being laid off.
This story originally appeared on Engadget
