Joining other tech companies that are laying off workers to battle global economic headwinds, work management software provider Asana announced Tuesday that it would lay off 9% of its total workforce to reduce operating spending. .
The company's chief operating officer (COO), Anne Raimondi, took to LinkedIn on Tuesday to announce that the company is reducing its global workforce, estimated at more than 1,600 employees.
“Today, Asana announced the difficult decision to reduce our workforce, which affects approximately 9% of the global team, as part of a restructuring plan to improve our operational efficiency and operating costs and to better align Asana's workforce with the current business needs, key strategic objectives. key growth priorities and opportunities,” an Asana spokesperson told Computerworld when asked the reason for the layoffs.
In an earnings call with analysts about second-quarter results, Asana said the company increased spending in many of its customer-facing roles in the first half to accommodate growth in the second half, and that it had already begun cutting back. your hiring.
"We've loaded several of our customer-facing roles this year to build sales capacity and infrastructure for the second half and beyond," Tim Wan, Asana's global chief financial officer, said, according to a transcript of the earnings call from Seeking Alpha. . During the same call, Wan said the company has taken initiatives, including moderating headcount growth, to improve operating efficiency.
“We have moderated headcount growth significantly and you will start to see it manifest first in general and administrative expenses and R&D. We have already reduced headcount growth from 13% sequentially in the first quarter to 5% in the second quarter, showing a change in momentum and underscoring our commitment to expense management,” Wan said.
Wan went on to say that due to changes in the macro environment, the company was taking steps to ensure that existing vendors closed more deals to support growth.
Software vendors like Asana have also faced lengthy transaction cycles due to uncertain economic conditions. While answering a specific question about longer deal cycles on the earnings call, Raimondi said deals with larger companies get more decision makers involved.
The involvement of more decision makers could be interpreted as a corporate strategy to further adjust spending. However, the company's career section continues to list several openings. In a statement to Computerworld, the company said it would continue to hire for critical roles at this time.
For the quarter ending in July, the company reported a net loss of €62,6 million despite a 51% increase in revenue.
According to the company's financial outlook, the company expects to report a third-quarter operating loss of between €66 million and €63 million based on €138,5 million to €139,5 million in revenue.
In September, the company's co-founder and CEO Dustin Moskovitz bought about 19 million shares of Class A common stock at $18,16 per share, injecting $350 million into the company.
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