Pinterest Sacks Two Engineers Over Layoff Monitoring and Privacy Issues

In the wake of discovering who else had lost their jobs in the most recent round of layoffs, Pinterest fired two engineers. Consequently, they went against the company's stated privacy and policy guidelines. As part of a larger reorganisation associated with an increased emphasis on artificial intelligence, Pinterest said that it would slash approximately 15% of its workforce, or about 700 positions, leading up to the layoffs.

The company's chief executive, Bill Ready, announced to employees that they were going all in on an AI-forward strategy. However, an employee then made the announcement public. Even while Pinterest didn't say which groups or individuals were let go, two engineers took it a step further.

A representative from the company informed the media that the individuals in question had written scripts specifically designed to access sensitive company information. They did it in order to discover the identities and whereabouts of fired workers. A representative from Pinterest remarked that this was an egregious invasion of privacy for their former coworkers.

How the Duo Scripted Pinterest Layoffs Deduction?

To automate processes or get data from pre-existing systems, programmers write what is known as a script in the coding domain. The engineers specifically targeted staff members' internal communication tools. Reportedly, the scripts revealed which employees had been affected by the layoffs when their names were removed or deactivated from systems that were comparable to Slack, a workplace chat tool.

The news quickly spread throughout the organisation. Neither of the two engineers' identities has been revealed. This instance shows how sensitive it is to layoffs involving company data and employees' privacy, especially in the IT industry, where employees often, if unofficially, watch company tools to see who is leaving.

IT Layoffs Continues in 2026

The layoffs at Pinterest were part of a larger trend of layoffs in the sector. During the same week, Amazon also announced its second round of layoffs in three months. Hence, resulting in the removal of 16,000 positions. Along with other major IT companies like Google and Microsoft, Meta has also laid off hundreds of workers this year. Layoffs.fyi indicates that during the last four years, almost 700,000 jobs have been lost in the tech sector worldwide.