'Bloodbath' at San Francisco startup, laid off employees share '9 am email horror' and more

Webflow, a popular website-building and hosting platform, has become the latest company to announce a major workforce restructuring, leaves a huge number of its employees out of work. Webflow CEO Linda Tong stated that the company has reached an “inflection point” and had to make the “difficult decision to restructure.” She explicitly pointed to the rapid rise of AI as the driving force behind the sudden layoffs. The the deeper shock for employees was the way job cuts were terminated: entirely without warning. Affected workers woke up to a sudden barrage of text messages about the cuts, followed by a cold, 9 am email informing them that they had been let go.“The way businesses build for the web is changing fast. AI is rewriting the rules for how marketing teams create, test and optimise digital experiences. And the companies that move decisively through moments like this are the ones that come out ahead,” Tong explained.While Webflow spokesperson Paul Chalker declined to reveal the exact number of affected workers, the company's LinkedIn profile indicates a total workforce of between 500 and 1,000 people. For the employees let go, the termination process was swift, sudden and entirely digital. Workers who spoke to the press noted that there was absolutely no prior warning that layoffs were imminent.A software engineer described waking up around 7:30 am to a flurry of panicked text messages from colleagues, and roughly an hour and a half later, he received an email to his personal account informing him that his employment had been officially terminated. Another worker confirmed she was similarly notified of her firing via her personal inbox.The staff also found themselves locked out of their systems before they even read the bad news. Chalker confirmed that Webflow locked workers out of their equipment right before the emails went out.“As part of our standard security process, access to company devices and systems was restricted a few minutes before notifications were sent to personal email addresses. That step was taken to protect customer data and company information, not to leave employees without information or support,” Chalker was quoted as saying. The engineer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, labeled the mass firing a “bloodbath” and believes the cuts are far deeper than the company's previous layoff round in 2024, which eliminated 8% of the workforce.“C-suite thinks that I’m being replaced by AI, but they don’t actually understand what AI is doing. They’re going to find out at some point that they haven’t actually replaced anything, all they’ve done is make a mess. You can’t replace people with AI because AI does not work that way,” the developer warned.Management, however, maintains that smaller teams are necessary for survival. Tong argued that the company needs to pivot to a “simpler structure, with leaders who stay closer to the work” to drive impact.