GoDaddy announces layoffs and office closures

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Reported last week GoDaddy will be laying off more than 400 employees: https://www.cozyit.com/godaddy-laying-off-more-than-300-staff-in-texas-closing-locations/

The Social Sales operations in Austin seems to be worst affected. In an email to to employees, CEO Aman Bhutani said due to reduced demand and "economics under pressure", the company cannot continue selling those products in its current way. 331 employees from the sales team will be laid off.

The letter also explained that GoDaddy will be closing both its Austin locations because those facilities "carry unique costs and complexities", further mentioning that Austin is the only GoDaddy location where decisions have been made about office locations.

Laid off employees will work their last day on Sept. 1.

 

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More insight from Structure Research, an independent research and consulting firm with a special focus on the Internet infrastructure, citing more layoffs and office closures:

"GoDaddy disclosed plans to reduce its workforce by over 800 people amid a small upward adjustment of its guidance. The reduction impacts ~12% of GoDaddy's headcount (GoDaddy has over 7k employees) and comes mostly as a result of weakness in outbound sales functions and sales of the GoDaddy Social offering. These have been adversely impacted by the new macroeconomic environment and the inability to contact customers through normal means. The reduction will see GoDaddy consolidate sales functions to Gilbert, Arizona and cut those in Iowa and Texas. Two offices in Texas will be shuttered as well. About 40% of the ~800 employees will be offered new positions within the firm so this is as much a re-alignment as a workforce reduction. The cuts do not reflect larger struggles. GoDaddy has tracked according to plan amid the shifts in the landscape and expects to exceed 2Q20 guidance of $790m in revenue by 1%. Growth continues to be driven by core services like domain name registration and hosting. These services, of courses, can be purchased remotely and online. The moves at GoDaddy reflect how the pandemic environment will impact SMB and mid-market hosting services. The growth and adoption of online services can offset the weakness in the larger economic environment and keep growth moving along consistently. But anything that requires more labour and a personal touch will be impacted. On-demand and automated services will continue to be the bread and butter."