2023 was definitely not a good year for Unity Technologies. It appears the company may have had a lot riding on that pricing model change they announced and rolled back in the second half of 2023. They received so much blowback from that position that the third worst CEO around, John Riccitiello, stepped down nearly a month later. Then came the layoffs. But it doesn’t look like Unity is finished yet.
It was announced yesterday that Unity is planning on cutting around 1,800 jobs. That is 25% of the company’s staff. They are calling this move a “company reset”. Honestly, if you’re gonna reset the company, I think the first people to go would be the people at the top, not just the CEO.
This layoff would be the biggest for Unity. They laid off over 1,100 people in 2023 alone. According to its disclosure with the US Security and Exchange Commision (SEC), this recent round of layoffs are happening while Unity “restructures and refocuses on its core business, and to position itself for long-term and profitable growth.”
According to Reuters, the layoffs shall be completed by March.
As someone who did not go to business school, I may be a little naive. However, I imagine that a business would always want long-term, sustainable, and profitable growth. How is it that nearly every company incurring layoffs hasn’t thought about that before now?
But, then again, I’m reminded of what Spotify’s CEO said.
Grab a bunch of cheap capital that you can’t pay back.
And everyone else loses their job for doing great work.
Source: Polygon
