Wattpad lays off 15% of its workers, blames altering financial atmosphere

Difficult financial situations are affecting companies of all sizes, leading to job cuts. Storytelling platform Wattpad introduced Tuesday that it has laid off 42 of its 267 folks workforce — that’s practically 15% of the workers. It would present no less than 12 weeks of severance and 6 months of continued advantages to the departing workers. Plus, they are going to be allowed to maintain office-allocated gadgets akin to laptops.

In a weblog put up, the corporate blamed the financial atmosphere for the cost-cutting measures and mentioned the layoff impacts all its divisions.

“As you all know, the worldwide financial actuality over the previous yr has basically modified – and like different companies, we aren’t immune. Regardless of our best efforts over the previous a number of months to restrict the influence of the altering financial atmosphere, at the moment, we’ve made the tough however essential resolution to scale back our workforce,” The corporate’s interim president KB Nam mentioned.

“This doesn’t imply that these workforce members haven’t been an vital a part of our work. It’s vital to notice that these selections are in response to altering enterprise realities and desires, and are under no circumstances a mirrored image of particular person contributions. Everybody at Wattpad has completed an incredible quantity and had a constructive influence on our firm.”

Final yr, the corporate appointed Naver Webtoon’s Nam because the interim president after Jeanne Lam determined to go away. In 2021, Wattpad grew to become part of the South Korean firm Naver after a $600 million acquisition.

Final June, the corporate launched a brand new creator program that might pay writers as much as $25,000. It additionally launched a brand new measurement metric known as “Engaged Readers” for writers.