Pinterest Layoffs: CEO Bill Ready Sacks Engineers As Company Doubles Down on an AI-Forward Approach

Mumbai, February 4: Pinterest has dismissed two software engineers after they reportedly developed and used custom computer code to identify colleagues who were being made redundant. The incident occurred shortly after the social media company announced a significant restructuring plan involving the reduction of its global workforce.

The layoffs, which affected approximately 700 roles or 15 per cent of the company's staff, were part of a strategic shift towards an "AI-forward approach," according to an internal memo from Chief Executive Bill Ready. While the company did not publicly disclose specific names or teams impacted by the cuts, the two engineers allegedly sought to uncover this information through unauthorised technical means. Oracle Layoffs 2026: Tech Giant Issues Clarification Over Reports of 30,000 Job Cuts.

Violation of Privacy Policies

According to a company spokesperson, the engineers wrote custom scripts to improperly access confidential internal data. These scripts were designed to monitor internal communication tools, such as Slack, to detect when employee accounts were being deactivated or removed. This allowed them to compile a list of names and locations of those dismissed, which was then shared more broadly within the company.

"This was a clear violation of Pinterest policy and of their former colleagues' privacy," a spokesperson told the BBC. The identities of the two engineers have not been made public, and the company maintained that the automation of such tasks for the purpose of tracking personnel movements breached their employment agreements.

Technical Monitoring of Redundancies

In the technology sector, it has become a common practice for employees to monitor Slack channels or internal directories to deduce who has been affected by sudden layoffs. However, the use of automated scripts to bypass privacy controls and aggregate this data is viewed as a serious security and ethical breach by corporate leadership.

The scripts targeted internal tools used for daily operations, creating automated alerts whenever a profile became inactive. By bypassing the standard information flow, the engineers were able to gain insight into the scale and specifics of the layoffs before official internal updates were provided to all departments.

Broader Tech Industry Context

The job cuts at Pinterest come amidst a broader period of volatility within the technology industry. In the same week as the Pinterest announcement, Amazon confirmed the removal of 16,000 roles, while Meta, Google, and Microsoft have all implemented significant staff reductions over the past year. Layoffs in 2026: Amazon, UPS, Dow and Other Global Tech Giants Axe Thousands of Jobs Amid Rising Costs and AI Restructuring.

Data from Layoffs.fyi indicates that approximately 700,000 people have been laid off across the global tech sector over the last four years. As companies transition their focus toward artificial intelligence, many are restructuring their engineering and product teams, leading to the current wave of redundancies seen across Silicon Valley and beyond.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 04, 2026 03:05 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).