Wayfair Boss, Weeks After Viral Memo, Cuts 13% of Staff

livemint.com:

Wayfair is laying off 13% of its employees, weeks after the company’s chief executive sent a memo asking them to work harder. On Friday the online retailer said it would lay off around 1,650 employees. Wayfair, which primarily sells furniture and other home goods, has done several rounds of large layoffs in recent years as pandemic furniture buying has cooled.

“We went overboard in hiring during a strong economic period and veered away from our core principles, and while we have come quite far back to them, we are not quite there," CEO Niraj Shah said in a memo to staff Friday. In 2022, Wayfair laid off around 900 people as the pandemic sales and profit boom faded. Last year, the company laid off roughly 1,700 employees as sales fell.

Before the pandemic, Wayfair in early 2020 laid off about 500 workers as it grappled with losses. “I believe we need to stay focused as a company on what committed small teams can accomplish," Shah wrote on Friday. “In many ways, having too many great people is worse than having too few." The layoff news comes weeks after Shah sent corporate employees a message during the holiday season thanking them for returning the company to profitability and asking them to work harder.

“Working long hours, being responsive, blending work and life, is not anything to shy away from. There is not a lot of history of laziness being rewarded with success," Shah wrote in December. The memo drew praise from some who want workers to return to offices and work harder, while others criticized it as tone-deaf.