Roblox lays off 30 workers from talent acquisition team as hiring slows

San Francisco, Sep 22 Gaming platform Roblox has reduced a significant portion of its talent acquisition team by laying off around 30 employees, indicating a shift in the company’s focus from expansion to the bottom line.

According to TechCrunch, the employees were let go on Monday. No other teams were affected by this layoff.

“The aggressive growth targets Roblox was operating against in the past few years required a heavier investment in our TA organisation,” a Roblox spokesperson was quoted as saying.

“With our commitment to getting our cash compensation growth in line with our bookings growth by the end of Q1 2024, we now need a smaller Talent Acquisition (TA) organisation to meet our adjusted hiring needs. This action is the result of the reduction in our hiring targets to better align with our growth goals,” it added.

Moreover, the report said there were hints in its recent Q2 earnings call that a hiring freeze was on the way as part of the company's ongoing cost-cutting efforts.

"We will see leverage against pretty much all of the cost areas over the next 12 months. We think we’ll see a little bit of leverage in cost of goods sold because we’ve slowed down hiring, leverage against our compensation expenses because infra, trust and safety, we slowed down a little bit there. We’ve already closed the gap pretty meaningfully on both of those two," Roblox’s chief financial officer, Michael Guthrie, shared on the Q2 earnings call.

However, Roblox's Chinese operation, a joint venture formed with internet and tech giant Tencent in 2019, appears unaffected by this round of layoffs, the report mentioned.