Some Digg employees won’t be happy today. Kevin Rose, a co-founder of Digg, the user driven social content website, has written a letter to Digg employees announcing that the workforce is going to be cut by 10 percent.
The letter, which was posted on the company blog read:
“This morning we faced the difficult task of reducing our team by about 10%. This was an emotional and rough morning for everyone involved” Rose wrote.
“Laying off dedicated and hard working individuals is extremely difficult, but we tried our best to treat everyone with the utmost respect and support. I hope all of you will join me in the effort to assist all of those affected, be it as a reference or a referring source and most importantly, as a friend.
“This is one of the hardest decisions we’ve had to make recently but we strongly believe that it is the right decision for the long-term health of the company.
“In order to achieve our goals, we are putting more emphasis on the engineering and development efforts. In fact, we are still hiring for these teams as they are critical in getting us to where we need to be for the future, for our impending upcoming redesign and much beyond. The only way for us to truly succeed is to adapt and adjust as necessary.
“I’m sure there will be many follow- up questions to this email. So, we’ll be holding an all hands today at 3pm where you can ask questions and share your comments” Rose ended the letter.
The last time Digg made staff cuts was in January 2009 and then, just as they have this time, they also mentioned that they will still be hiring only then it was for sales staff and this time it’s for engineering and development staff.
Ok so 10 percent sounds a lot but it actually amounts to less than ten employees if the number of employees listed on their site is accurate (72), still, it sends a clear message that Digg are feeling the recession just like the rest of us.
Kevin Rose has only been Digg’s CEO for a few weeks after taking over from Jay Adelson, looks like he isn’t wasting any time trying to put the company on a better track to profitability.
