Pinterest fired two engineers who wrote a custom script to track which employees were laid off during its recent restructuring, the company said.
The move came after Pinterest announced job cuts that would affect about 15% of its workforce, roughly 700 roles, as part of what chief executive Bill Ready described in an internal memo as “doubling down on an AI-forward approach,” according to an employee who shared parts of the email on LinkedIn.
Two engineers wrote custom scripts improperly accessing confidential company information to identify the locations and names of all dismissed employees and then shared it more broadly, as reported by BBC.
At a subsequent companywide meeting, Ready defended the firings, saying “healthy debate and dissent are expected… but there’s a clear line between constructive debate and behavior that’s obstructionist,” according to audio accessed by CNBC.
He emphasized that the company was at a “critical moment” and that employees who disagreed with its mission should consider working elsewhere.
Ready also told employees that detailed layoff information would not be shared to protect privacy. “I know people have natural curiosity around these things,” he said. “We shared some of those major structural changes. The smaller ones, those will be communicated at the team level.”
Pinterest’s decision came amid ongoing job cuts across the tech sector. In the same week, Amazon reportedly cut 16,000 roles, while Meta also laid off several hundred employees earlier this year. Layoffs.fyi estimated that about 700,000 tech workers had been laid off in the last four years.
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