Image: © davide bonaldo/Stock.adobe.com
Patreon first announced plans to open its Dublin office in 2019. It is now shutting this base and offering to relocate nine engineers.
Patreon is laying off 17pc of its staff and shutting its offices in Dublin and Berlin.
In a note to staff yesterday (13 September), Patreon CEO Jack Conte said that the Dublin office is being closed because the company is consolidating its engineering team in the US “to improve collaboration and efficiency”. The note was also published in a blogpost.
The majority of Patreon’s engineers are located in its US offices, said Conte, and nine engineers in Dublin are being offered relocation packages to join these teams.
Patreon develops a membership and payments platform for creators. It first announced plans to open its Dublin office in 2019 and said it would hire 30 staff, including product, engineering and admin personnel.
In total, Patreon is now laying off 80 employees from its go-to-market, operations, finance and people teams.
As well as Dublin, it also is closing its Berlin base, which is solely focused on sales and marketing. Conte said that this area of the business had been designated for major budget cutbacks in order to shift resources towards product.
Patreon’s Porto office will remain in operation, with its support and trust and safety teams based there. They will work to “cultivate a presence in Europe, but with a smaller geographic footprint”, Conte said.
He explained that affected staff would receive a calendar invite within 10 minutes of him posting the memo, leading to a video call to discuss the employee’s situation. For Dublin engineering staff, the invite would be titled ‘Relocation Offer’ and they would meet with an engineering lead to discuss “their next steps”.
Conte said the cutbacks come following considerable changes in the tech industry and the wider economy.
“Moving forward, we will adopt a more scaled approach to helping creators onboard, in which US-based teams will support multiple regions. We will be consolidating our marketing efforts to our US teams, focused on updating our brand, developing creator resources and launching new products,” said Conte.
Earlier in the month, Patreon let go five staff from its security team, which Conte said was not connected to these most recent layoffs.
“This is a challenging economic environment to be looking for a new job,” he acknowledged. “So it was especially important to me that we build a supportive package for teammates leaving the company, including extended health coverage, additional equity vesting, at least three months of pay and job placement support.”
Patreon it is not the only tech player facing cutbacks in a challenging economy. Last week, Intercom said it was laying off 49 people, including 23 in Ireland, while there have been significant cuts at Snap, Shopify, Klarna and others.
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