A Message from Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson

This is an email that was sent out to all Twilio employees today from Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson.

Twilions,

Over the years, we’ve made lots of changes to the way Twilio operates and is organized, but none harder than what I’m sharing today.

We’ve made the extremely difficult decision to restructure and reduce Twilio’s workforce by approximately 11% – teammates and friends who helped build Twilio.

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This was tremendously difficult. For those impacted today, we applied a rigorous selection process to examine which roles were most tightly aligned to our four priorities. Similarly, we looked at the size of the investments we’ve made and whether they are working for our company. We ultimately found that some investments no longer make sense and identified areas where we can be more efficient. By no fault of the Twilions impacted today, we’ve curtailed our investment in areas of Go To Market where customers can succeed without as much human intervention, as well as making targeted changes to be more efficient in areas of R&D and G&A.

As you all know, we are committed to becoming an Anti-Racist/Anti-Oppression company. Layoffs like this can have a more pronounced impact on marginalized communities, so we were particularly focused on ensuring our layoffs – while a business necessity today – were carried out through an Anti-Racist/Anti-Oppression lens.

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I know this is especially hard news for those Twilions who depend on Twilio-sponsored visas. We’ll be giving those team members even more support to hopefully minimize the disruption to them and their families as they work through their immigration status.

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