The latest wave of job cuts in Silicon Valley has now finally reached LinkedIn, which is known to help professional networking giants find jobs. Now, the irony is that it is finding itself in the position of handing over the pink slip. According to a filing with the Employment Development Department of California this week, LinkedIn is allowing 281 employees to go to the state. These deductions earlier this month, the widespread announcement of Microsoft, heats up on heels that it will trim around 6,000 jobs globally, which is about 3 percent of its total workforce. As a company owned by Microsoft, LinkedIn has not been spared.

Around this time, the pink slip became particularly rigid on software engineers, although others were not completely immune. Rolls like Senior Excise Manager and Pratibha Account Director were also impressed. According to reports, employees were trimmed on 13 May, many people took themselves to declare LinkedIn to declare their new “open” status.

This is a moment of Deja Wu for LinkedIn employees, although the tone is clearly different. In 2023, when the company allowed 716 employees to leave, CEO Ryan Roslanski personally addressed the decision in a hearty internal memorandum. Rapid forward to 2025, so far there is no word from it. Due to no public comments yet, speculation prevails about whether more job cuts are on the horizon.

This year with companies such as Meta, Google, and Autodesk has become some of a depressed technical field trend, which are all reducing their workforce. While the reasons vary – from restructuring to AI investment and claims of underpaperforms – the message is clear: the industry is changing rapidly, and not all the role is safe.

One of the biggest disruptives? artificial intelligence. With AI tools now able to generate codes, debugging and even suggesting product improvement, many companies are quietly reconsideration of how many engineers they actually need. This is a bittersweet twist – the construction of an engineering tool is so effective that they can exclude themselves from the job. While focusing on AI and how it affects jobs, LinkedIn’s co-founder Reid Hoffman clearly stated that AI is not a friend and whoever thinks that this way would definitely cause damage. He said, “I don’t think an AI tool is able to be a friend today. And I think if it is pretending to be a friend, you are really hurting that person.”

For LinkedIn, which employs over 18,400 people worldwide, trimmed may indicate a strategic axis. Once seen as a trusted COG in the Microsoft machine, the platform is now undergoing a revival era as automation and economic uncertainty, technical giants for “streamline operations”.

While AI promises efficiency and innovation, it also raises uncomfortable questions about job security, even already considered safe.