Elastic lays off 7% of employees

puszczyk

Makes me sad to read it as an ex-Elastic employee. AI is used to justify the redundancies, and the company still expects to grow in this fiscal year. In the SEC filling the specifically mention more “head count” in “go-to-market” roles [1]. > a reduction of approximately 7% of our workforce > Advances in AI, automation, and technology are reshaping how work gets done, and we're changing with them. (…) That's what this reorganization is for: a simpler structure, with fewer layers, less complexity, and less friction. > The changes we announced today are a sign of confidence in the business, not a retreat from it. We continue to invest in key growth areas and expect total headcount to grow year-over-year this fiscal year [the SEC filling says “ The Company plans to continue hiring in key strategic areas and locations, including continuing to grow headcount in customer-facing go-to-market functions, and expects total headcount to grow this fiscal year compared to last fiscal year, as it continues to invest in future growth opportunities”] [1]: https://ir.elastic.co/financials/sec-filings/sec-filings-det...

nozzlegear

This announcement spends remarkably few words talking about the what (7% of the company's workforce was laid off), and a great deal of words talking about how bright the future of the company is and how they're going to hire more people.

msteffen

I wonder if some of these CEOs are anticipating a big crash and trying to lay people off now, so that (1) they can raise/hoard cash while the money-go-round is spinning and (2) their eng organization is already lean and used to it if/when the money-go-round stops. “Because of AI” indeed.

SaucyWrong

Funny, so many words used but my brain only hears, “I am currently mismanaging this company,” every time one of these layoffs occurs.

keithnz

This just reaffirms my view is that big companies will lose headcount because of AI, but small and medium companies will (or at least have the potential to) leverage AI to do bigger and better things. This is because big companies could always spend big money on getting what they want made while small companies always have to tradeoff what they can realistically do with the resources they have.

gortok

I recommended an elastic demo for a client that would be well served by Elasticsearch. The Elastic sales folks completely torpedoed the presentation by trying to focus on their AI “capabilities” and not on the recommended talking points. This was 2 years ago.

enraged_camel

So how many people? I can't find this info anywhere.

bigyikes

Why even bother with such a small layoff? Is there a reason to not just dial up your attrition for a while?

tracerbulletx

Before the 1980s layoffs were seen as a massive failure of the company and almost never happened to tenured employees unless the company was collapsing. Before we are all made to think this is normal and unavoidable behavior.

qwertyuiop_

We're in an outstanding position and well-equipped for the future. I'm excited about the opportunities ahead and focused on making sure Elastic is positioned to lead in this next phase of innovation. - Ash Kulkarni" If they are in an outstanding position why did he make 7% of the employees lives miserable with a stroke of a pen.

wegwerper

No way to prevent this says workers of only country where this regularly happens. Unionize, brothers and sisters!

thayne

> Customer expectations are increasing and evolving faster than ever before Wouldn't that suggest you need those workers more?

nobleach

I'm sure now that they've right-sized the org, the leftover engineers + AI are really gonna grind out the best features. We should be seeing 10x any day now.

gaiagraphia

I'm sure these workers signed up to the "free market principles". Too bad, so bad?

moron4hire

Looks like Elastic has a lazy CEO https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/nvidias-jensen-hu...

coolid

this should we do this or no this is not right

maxloh

I wonder how much of the layoffs were caused by their license change in 2021. They lost a lot of goodwill back then. Some of their potential customers migrated to OpenSearch and never looked back, even after they backed down and went open-source again under AGPL.

sergiotapia

> this requires us to move faster and operate leaner than we have before :laughing: > To do it, we're shifting our pace of innovation, simplifying how we operate, and investing in new skills. That's what this reorganization is for: a simpler structure, with fewer layers, less complexity, and less friction. Translation: We're going to run the remaining people ragged. > That means fewer layers, broader ownership, clearer accountability, and a sharper focus on the skills we believe matter most for what's ahead. Yeah the people remaining are cooked. It's never "we're going to hire more people to build lots of cool stuff" it's always giving fewer people quadruple the responsibility expectation.

SpyCoder77

Saying 7% in this scenario is the wrong choice. It diminishes the absolute number of ~281 people who just had their lives shaken up by this.

tylerjl

It's interesting to contrast this announcement with a similar post from the CEO in 2022 [1]: those past layoffs had much more of a victim-of-circumstances tone as ZIRP was beginning to dry up, but apparently those "bad times" versus "good times" during AI mania just accounts for a delta of +6% additional layoffs. Another commenter questioned what size bucket Elastic falls into these days; in April 2025 their SEC filing [2] cited about 3,500 employees. So not a startup any more but definitely not fully-fledged FAANG-sized. (not sure whether it even applies here; but full disclosure, I left Elastic in 2022.) [1]: https://www.elastic.co/blog/ceo-ash-kulkarni-email-to-elasti... [2]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1707753/000170775325...