In the blog post, Stoppelman insisted that remote-first was best for Yelp and that even a hybrid model is a mistake when it requires employees to show up at the office regularly. ![]() Before the pandemic Yelp was squeezed by the tech giants for both real estate and talent in San Francisco, although the picture looks very different now. Yelp downsized its San Francisco headquarters to three floors of a building in September of 2021. Stoppelman tweeted that wanting to fund in-office startups was “equivalent to ‘looking to fund startups running Windows95,’” encouraging Rabois to “live in the future and fully embrace remote.” Stoppelman has previously been a vocal advocate for remote work, going toe-to-toe with Founders Fund partner Keith Rabois last month when Rabois tweeted that he wanted to fund “IRL startups.” Those three offices will close July 29, he said. Only 1% of Yelp’s global employee base goes to the office every day, Stoppelman said, and employees were using less than 2% of the available workspaces in New York, Chicago and D.C. “The most telling signal for us that people strongly prefer remote work has been the under-utilization of our offices,” Stoppelman wrote. Yelp is also trimming its real estate footprint in Phoenix, he said. In a Thursday blog post, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman said employees were barely using those three offices. In a report filed with the SEC this week, Yelp said that it expects to spend between $8–10 million on severance and benefits costs related to the layoffs, and Stoppelman writes that laid off workers “will be offered severance pay, and reimbursement for up to three months of health insurance coverage” while “employees on furlough will be put on unpaid leave, unless otherwise noted, but will retain the bulk of their benefits during this time and receive two weeks of additional pay.” Those with reduced hours will retain their current benefits, Stoppelman says.Īccording to Stoppelman’s memo, laid-off workers will be notified Thursday morning by their “department leaders,” “and letters with more details and FAQs will follow this afternoon.Yelp is closing its New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., offices as the company embraces remote work. The layoffs and hour reductions join a host of other cost-cutting measures, Stoppelman says, including a reduction of server costs, and 20–30 percent “pay cuts for all execs.” Stoppelman says he will not take a salary (for an indeterminate period of time), and “I also will not vest any of my 2020 stock awards for the remainder of the year.” SF Bar Owner to Yelp: ‘Fuck All of These People Entirely’ Yelp, GoFundMe Make COVID-19 Fundraisers for Restaurants Without Their Permission With traffic to restaurants down, reviews are less likely to be written - and with some chefs vigorously arguing against any Yelp use during the pandemic, it’s likely that people who spend their free time reviewing local businesses are also doing so with less vehemence than they did prior to the crisis. Finally, there’s the user-generated reviews that provide the content backbone of the site. In addition, given that the restaurants that do remain open are struggling just to cover paychecks and rent, it’s unlikely that they have additional revenue to spend on Yelp ads, whose effectiveness has long faced skepticism. ![]() It’s obviously not going to make that in 2020: As the company’s revenue is based on advertisements sold to businesses like restaurants, shops, and service providers (a model that’s been in place since the company’s creation), if those businesses are shuttered during the shutdown, there’s no reason for them to buy ads on Yelp. The company, which was founded in 2004, announced last year that its revenues had hit $1 billion, and the Street reports that as of March 31, the company had $491 million in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities. Those decisions, Stoppelman says, mean “we will let 1,000 of our colleagues go and furlough approximately 1,100 more, while reducing hours for others.”Īccording to an SEC filing, as of December 31, 2019, Yelp boasted 5,950 employees, making today’s layoffs a staffing reduction of around 17 percent. In it, Stoppelman wrote that as a result of the coronavirus crisis, “interest in restaurants, our most popular category, has dropped 64 percent since March 10, and the nightlife category is down 81 percent.” Other business categories experienced similar drops, which means “we have had to make some incredibly hard decisions to reduce our operating costs.” The message was also posted to Yelp’s blog. ![]() In an email sent to the entire workforce of San Francisco-based reviews-and-ratings platform Yelp, its co-founder and CEO Jeremy Stoppelman announced that by this afternoon, over 2,100 employees would be left without a job, while others would have their hours (and, presumably, pay) cut.
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