Less than three months after installing a new CEO, Austin-based online customer engagement company Khoros LLC has laid off about 10 percent of its staff, according to numerous LinkedIn posts.
The company didn't immediately respond to questions about the layoffs Friday. As of August, Khoros had about 1,200 global employees, which would pencil out to about 120 employees laid off.
The layoffs included a senior communications manager and at least two strategists in Austin. And, since the company has 11 offices, the cuts also impacted a vice president in Scottsdale, a head of trivia in Portland, a recruiter in Ohio and a sales manager in Oklahoma City, among others, according to LinkedIn posts.
The move comes about three months after Chris Tranquill was promoted to CEO, replacing Jack Blaha, who led the company for about three years before stepping into an advisory role. Then, in September, Khoros promoted Staci Satterwhite to chief operating officer and Kathie Jones to CFO, which made the company's C-suite more than 50% female.
Khoros, which develops software that helps companies interact with customers over chat and other engagements, works with more than 2,000 brands, including roughly a third of the Fortune 100. The company is majority owned by Austin-based Vista Equity Partners, which bought Spredfast and Lithium in 2018 and combined them into Khoros.
It's just one of hundreds of tech companies that have laid off team members in recent months. Layoffs.fyi, which has been tracking startup layoffs globally since the start of the pandemic, has logged 696 startups that have made layoffs in 2022. That has impacted more than 92,000 employees this year.
In Austin this year, speech-to-text software maker Rev.com is laying off 85 employees; digital health startup Wheel laid off 35 people; crypto miner Core Scientific cut about 10% of staff; real estate startup Homeward trimmed its staff by 20%; insurtech startup The Zebra reduced its headcount; and energy industry staffing startup Workrise let a reported 450 people go.
In what has become commonplace, many laid off employees have written posts on LinkedIn with the #OpenToWork hashtag that can help draw the attention of recruiters. Meanwhile, recruiters, colleagues and friends at other companies have been inviting recently laid off workers to consider openings at their businesses.
"Just seeing the layoffs at Khoros today," one former employee wrote. "Been a minute since I worked there, but if we worked together and you were effected, reach out. If we don't have a fit at SourceDay, maybe I can at least help in your search for a new gig."
