Low-code platform provider Airtable enacts new round of layoffs

Low-code software company Airtable announced its second round of job cuts in nine months, laying off around 237 people, or approximately 27% of the company.

The cuts are part of a plan to focus the company on winning large enterprise clients and getting spending under control, CEO Howie Liu told Forbes, which  first reported the layoffs. They follow job cuts made by the company in December 2022 that saw 254 people laid off.

Airtable will be cash-flow positive after this round of layoffs, Liu reportedly said, adding that the cuts were the result of a downturn in business following a period of hypergrowth experienced by the company during the pandemic. 

The Airtable app is a cloud-based relational database that looks like a spreadhseet and can be used by nontechnical workers to analyze data as well as plan and collaborate on projects.

Airtable currently has six offices across the globe and the cuts will be companywide, with the largest layoffs hitting product and sales teams. Airtable has not yet responded to a request for comment.

Layoffs have plagued the tech sector in 2023

The start of 2023 saw a dizzying spell of job cuts in the tech sector with some companies — such as Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft — laying off tens of thousands of employees or experiencing multiple rounds of cuts.

Although things have somewhat plateaued in the second half of the year, Google’s parent company Alphabet let go of hundreds of employees from its recruiting team this week, having already laid off 12,000 employees in January of this year.

Elsewhere, the explosion of generative AI in the enterprise looks set to provide some job opportunities at companies that had previously shed a percentage of their workforce. Having laid off 8,000 employees in January, Salesforce announced this week that it is now planning to hire around 3,300 workers, including rehiring some of the company’s former employees. The newly recruited workers will be split between sales, engineering, and the team handling the development of its Data Cloud. The plan includes rehiring.