github layoffs: Microsoft’s GitHub slashes nearly half of its India workforce, lays off 140

Microsoft-owned code-sharing and publishing service GitHub has fired about 140 employees, or 45% of its total Indian workforce, sources in the know told ET.

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The layoffs have mainly impacted engineering roles, one of the sources said.

This is part of a global retrenchment plan that the company had announced in February, a spokesperson told ET in response to queries.

“As part of the reorganisation plan shared in February, workforce reductions were made today as part of difficult but necessary decisions and realignments to both protect the health of our business in the short term and grant us the capacity to invest in our long-term strategy moving forward,” the spokesperson said.

The development was first flagged by Gergely Orosz, a former Uber engineering manager, who runs a newsletter Pragmatic Engineer.

Also read | Layoffs in 2023: Accenture, Indeed, Amazon among latest firms to cut jobs amid economic turmoil

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India is a crucial developer market and a key engineering hub for GitHub.

In 2020, GitHub announced the opening of its subsidiary, GitHub India, while also crediting the country for hosting its third largest community of developers.

In September last year, GitHub also made its developer platform available in India to help boost the startup ecosystem.

Eligible startups in India, and globally, were due to receive up to 20 seats of GitHub Enterprise free for one year, including support and guidance from GitHub technical experts. The company had reported 7.2 million developers in India on its platform out of its 83 million global count then.

In an internal memo to employees on February 9, GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke, said that the company was enacting new budgetary realignments, designed to protect the short-term health of our business "while also granting us the capacity to invest in our long-term strategy."

"Unfortunately, this will include changes that will result in a reduction of GitHub’s workforce by up to 10% through the end of FY23. A number of Hubbers will receive notifications today, others will follow as we are re-aligning the business through the end of FY23. The hiring pause that I announced on January 18 remains in effect," this memo added.

Seperately, same day, GitHub competitor GitLab's CEO Sid Sijbrandij also told global staffers in an internal memo
that the company was going to reduce the size of its team by 7%.

“I had hoped reprioritising our spending would be enough to withstand the growing global economic downturn. Unfortunately, we need to take further steps and match our pace of spending with our commitment to responsible growth,” he had said.

Sijbrandij attributed the decision to the tough macroeconomic environment, citing how client companies were taking a more conservative approach to software investments even while spending, and taking more time to make purchasing decisions.

SAP, Google and Accenture are some of the global software service companies that have announced layoffs this year in India.