GitLab is going to lay off 7 percent of its workforce. That amounts to about 130 employees. The letter to employees also indicates that the layoffs will be made at various offices of the company.
GitLab foreman Sid Sijbrandij states as motivation that the ‘current macroeconomic conditions are very tough’, which is causing companies to consider GitLab services’ be more cautious about spending money and wait longer with it’. “I had hoped that reprioritizing our spending would be enough to weather the growing global economic downturn. Unfortunately, we must take further steps and align our spending pace with our commitment to responsible growth.”
The estimate of 130 employees is based on PitchBook, which CNBC consulted. GitLab itself does not disclose exactly how many employees it is retiring; it only speaks of 7 percent. Where the redundancies fall is therefore not disclosed, but in the description of the settlement of the redundancies it is always stated that this will be done in accordance with local legislation. This seems to indicate that these are redundancies in different countries. GitLab has offices in the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands and Singapore.
Sijbrandij says the company will hold an Ask Me Anythings series to answer questions from employees and prospective former employees. Presumably these will not be online and public.
GitLab is a DevOps platform that is seen as a major competitor for repository platform GitHub. GitHub was acquired by Microsoft in 2018, much to the dismay of many users. GitLab is the only major standalone player in the repository market, as Bitbucket was acquired by Atlassian.
