LinkedIn plans 5% staff cut as tech layoffs reshape growth priorities

LinkedIn’s plan to cut 5% of staff, or roughly 875 jobs from a global workforce of more than 17,500, is a reminder that tech’s restructuring has moved well beyond panic-mode layoffs. The reductions were set to be communicated on Wednesday, and the affected teams included engineering, product, marketing and the Global Business Organization. LinkedIn did not describe the move as AI-driven; it framed the cuts as a reorganization toward areas where business is growing.

For monday.com employees, the message is less about one company’s headcount and more about the shape of knowledge-work jobs right now. In sales, buyers are still under pressure to do more with fewer people, which makes automation easier to sell and harder to justify in procurement. In product, the pressure is to show exactly which features drive retention, expansion and revenue, not just ship broadly useful software. In engineering, smaller teams and broader roles are becoming the norm, and AI tools are increasingly expected to compress cycles rather than simply add another layer of process.

That tension matters because LinkedIn is one of the most visible brands in the talent and recruiting ecosystem. When a platform tied so closely to hiring, careers and professional identity trims staff, the move reverberates beyond one balance sheet. It changes how workers talk about stability, how managers justify priorities and how companies across SaaS explain where growth will come from next.

monday.com is offering its own version of that answer. The company said first-quarter 2026 revenue reached $351.3 million, up 24% from a year earlier, while it posted record GAAP and non-GAAP operating income and record net adds of customers paying more than $500,000 in annual recurring revenue. As of March 31, 2026, monday.com had 3,211 employees, and it said it served more than 250,000 customers worldwide as of December 31, 2025.

The company has also pushed hard to tie that growth to AI. It launched an AI Work Platform with native agents, and co-CEO Roy Mann said AI had driven a 32% increase in output per developer since 2025. CFO Eliran Glazer said headcount was expected to stay largely flat for the rest of fiscal 2026 because of those productivity gains. That is the same pressure line running through the LinkedIn cut: growth is still the goal, but the market now expects software companies to reach it with leaner teams, broader responsibilities and far less tolerance for friction.