SAN JOSE, California — eBay has revealed plans to eliminate nearly 200 Bay Area jobs, grim cutbacks that add to a rising mountain of local layoffs orchestrated by tech and biotech companies, a filing Tuesday with state officials shows.
The online auction and shopping e-commerce company said it would undertake layoffs that are slated to affect eBay workers in San Jose and San Francisco.
The layoffs began Tuesday, eBay stated in an official WARN notice to the state Employment Development Department.
eBay said it has decided to eliminate the jobs of 185 workers at the company’s headquarters complex in San Jose and an outpost site in San Francisco, an eBay executive stated in the WARN letter, which was dated Feb. 7.
The tech titan didn’t reveal how many jobs would be lost in San Jose and how many in San Francisco.
“All affected employees will receive in excess of 60 days advance notice, or pay in lieu of notice, as required by law,” eBay stated in the WARN letter sent to the EDD.
The layoffs were due to take place at the eBay campus in south San Jose on Hamilton Avenue and at a company site in a San Francisco tower on Mission Street, the filing stated.
Since mid-2022, tech and biotech companies have eliminated or are planning to cut well over 19,000 jobs in the Bay Area, this news organization’s assessment of WARN letters and other filings shows.
“This action is expected to be permanent,” eBay wrote in the WARN notice to the EDD. “No affected employee has any bumping rights.”
These Bay Area job cuts are part of the company’s decision to eliminate 500 jobs worldwide, or about 4% of the eBay workforce, the tech titan stated in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The disclosures show that 37% of the job cuts are occurring in the Bay Area.
“Over the past few months, we’ve taken a thoughtful look at where we are as a company with considerations of the macroeconomic situation around the world and how to best invest and operate so that we can continue to be successful,” Jamie Iannone, eBay’s chief executive officer, stated in a letter to employees that the company filed with the SEC.
San Jose-based eBay must “evolve” so it can “create long-term, sustainable growth,” Iannone stated in the open letter to employees.
The layoffs are a necessary ingredient the company’s stated goal of evolution, the CEO wrote in the letter to employees.
“Today’s actions are designed to strengthen our ability to deliver better end-to-end experiences for our customers and to support more innovation and scale across our platform,” Iannone said.
eBay’s CEO said the company must focus its efforts in areas where it can make the greatest impact.
“This shift gives us additional space to invest and create new roles in high-potential areas — new technologies, customer innovations and key markets — and to continue to adapt and flex with the changing macro, e-commerce and technology landscape,” Iannone wrote in the letter to eBay workers.
