Bird announced Wednesday it would lay off 23% of its employees from different teams and regions across the globe.
The news, which was first reported by TechCrunch Tuesday, comes after the scooter company revealed it was off to a rough financial start in 2022. When Bird announced its first quarter earnings in May, reporting a hit in revenue, gross margins, and ride profits, founder and CEO Travis VanderZanden said that the company would be taking action to achieve profitability and realign its resources (read: cut costs by eliminating jobs).
Bird confirmed the layoffs, which will affect roughly 138 employees, to Gizmodo in an email. The company had over 600 team members. Posts by former employees on LinkedIn from this week indicated that the layoffs had already begun.
“While the need for and access to micro-electric vehicle transportation has never been greater, macro economic trends impacting everyone have resulted in an acceleration of our path to profitability,” Bird said in the statement. “We also unfortunately had to depart with a number of team members who passionately helped create a new industry.”
A stock market spiral is bearing down on Silicon Valley. Bird is the latest tech company to announce layoffs and other cost cutting measures, including hiring freezes, joining the ranks of Robinhood, Uber, and Meta. In one extraordinary case, Coinbase rescinded job offers it had made to people via email, proving that you can still find new ways to be a corporate asshole.
According to the company, all team members affected by layoffs were given the news in one-on-one meetings with senior company officials; they were also provided with a human resources contact. Employees who were laid off received a minimum of three weeks’ ‘severance, three months of healthcare coverage, extended exercise windows for vested options, and their laptops, among other benefits.
