Pluralsight, a Utah-based software business, has announced more cuts to its employees four months after laying off 20% of its workforce, according to an internal blog post obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune.
As of 5 p.m. Friday, the company had not responded to Tribune requests regarding how many workers were laid off earlier this week, but the internal blog post stated that the layoffs included employees in video content production, curriculum, and engineering.
Pluralsight, based in Draper, Utah, offers subscriptions to their training software and online classes to government agencies, universities, colleges, and vocational schools.
According to SEC papers, the company, which was founded in 2004, went public in 2018, and reported a net loss of $163.5 million in 2019 and $164 million in 2020. Pluralsight stated in 2021 that it would become private again after being acquired for $3.8 billion by Vista Equity Partners.
On December 12, less than two weeks before Christmas, CEO Aaron Skonnard emailed employees with one of the toughest messages that I’ve ever delivered the company was laying off 400 employees, or roughly one in every five, due to the “challenging economic environment we’re operating in and how it has affected our business performance.
Skonnard apologized to his employees at the moment, saying, We’ve let you down during a tough period, but he also voiced optimism This is truly a sad day. But, as I look ahead, I am upbeat and confident in Pluralsight’s purpose and the value we will continue to provide to customers throughout the world.
According to an internal blog post shared with The Tribune, Pluralsight’s senior vice president of domains Ben Henderson sent a blog post to the company’s author community on Monday, announcing that Pluralsight had initiated a restructuring that included layoffs in curriculum management, content direction, project coordination, and video and assessment content production.
He wrote that, in order to better compete and win in a fast-changing and challenging market landscape, the company is restructuring its workforce and reducing the size of the production and operations teams overall where we have identified opportunities for consolidation of functions as part of the new centralized model.
Henderson, who works from Australia, announced his resignation in order to optimize… time with my young family. Henderson stated that Meghan Manfre, the current leader of the security and tech foundations teams, will serve as interim head of content.
After 18 years with Pluralsight, he stated, I’ve made the decision to go ahead and spend more time and focus with my growing family.
According to the blog post, Ai-ling Chang, a longstanding Pluralsight employee, will take over as interim chief product officer.
Pluralsight was granted a state tax credit of up to $21 million in 2017 if company met the criteria of a 10-year contract with the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity to generate 2,464 jobs.
According to the Office of Economic Opportunity, layoffs lower the tax advantages available to businesses and may prevent them from getting a tax credit.
