One More Day, One More Round Of Layoff: Vox Media Sacks Around 7 % Of Its Employees Due To ‘Financial Pressures’

In a third round of layoff at the firm, Vox media has slashed 7 percent of its workforce on Friday.

Vox Media Layoff: Layoff woes seem to be a on rise. From new layoff almost every day, job cuts seem to be growing with every hour, each passing day. In another round of media layoffs, one of the bigger names, Vox media has sacked around 7 per cent of its workforce, reported Bloomberg. Vox Media has other major properties – The Verge, New York Magazine, Vox.com, Eater.

According to report, Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff informed about the job cuts in a memo citing “the challenging economic environment impacting our business and industry.” The layoffs will hit “several different teams across Revenue, Editorial, Operations and Core Services,” according to Bankoff.

The union representing Vox Media employees said it was “furious” over the announcement.

We were informed today that the company is laying off around 7 percent of its workforce, and some of our members have been impacted.

We’re furious at the way the company has approached these layoffs, and are currently discussing how to best serve those who just lost their jobs.

— VOX MEDIA UNION WON A FAIR CONTRACT (@vox_union) January 20, 2023

Read Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff

The mentioned below memo by Bankoff has been taken from a report by Variety.

Hello everyone,

We’ve made the difficult decision to eliminate roughly 7% of our staff roles across departments, due to the challenging economic environment impacting our business and industry.

For those whose role has been eliminated, Chief People Officer Annie Trombatore will inform you in an email within the next 15 minutes and your People business partner will follow up with a meeting to talk through a severance package, including options to extend select benefits paid by Vox Media. Given the number of people impacted today, we are notifying them over email in an effort to inform them as soon as possible. Several different teams across Revenue, Editorial, Operations and Core Services are impacted by the layoffs. I will refrain from sharing department-level detail here, so that those leaving the company hear directly first, but senior leadership will be providing more details, as appropriate, over the course of the day and into early next week.

We are experiencing and expect more of the same economic and financial pressures that others in the media and tech industries have encountered. These difficult circumstances prompted us to take other steps over the past few months to reduce our spending. We suspended most new hiring and significantly reduced discretionary spending. While we are not expecting further layoffs at this time, we will continue to assess our outlook, keep a tight control on expenses and consider implementing other cost savings measures as needed.

Unfortunately, in this economic climate, we’re not able to sustain projects and areas of the business that have not performed as anticipated, are less core to where we see the biggest opportunities in the coming years, or where we don’t have enough rationale to support ongoing investment in what could be a prolonged downturn. In spite of the dedication of the many talented people involved in these initiatives, we need to scale back.

It is important to note that the brands in our portfolio are as relevant as ever to their audiences and in the marketplace. We continue to do outstanding work across our editorial properties and business lines. Our company is fundamentally strong; these setbacks are driven primarily by the temporal macro-economic forces that are impacting nearly all businesses in our sector.

Having said that, I realize that we need to constantly evolve and improve if we want to continue to be the leading modern media company and strongest possible workplace. Especially during a downturn, operational discipline and strategic focus will be key to Vox Media’s success. Audience engagement and loyalty will be our primary focus. We will prioritize our brands’ core missions and value to their audiences and our business partners. We’ll continue to diversify revenue and media formats, focusing on areas of the business where we expect substantial, stable growth.

I am incredibly grateful to our colleagues who will be leaving Vox Media today. Your talent and contributions have undoubtedly made us a better company. While these decisions were caused by the challenging economic environment and our need to prioritize resources, it doesn’t make this news any easier.

For those who are continuing with Vox Media, please support your colleagues today. We will schedule an All Hands in the next few weeks and will meet more frequently through the first half of the year to provide business updates.

Thank you,

Jim

This is reportedly, a third round of layoff at the media house. Over the past few months big names in the league like Washington Post, Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., AMC Networks Inc., Paramount Global and several others also fired lots of people. Earlier in the week, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Swiggy, Salesforce, Intel and others also slashed its workforce.