SoftBank-backed companies laid off more than 29,000 people in 2020 as the pandemic ravaged startups

Riccardo Savi/Getty Images; WeWork; Ruobing Su/Business Insider

Embattled office company WeWork cut at least hundreds of jobs in May in a month-long rollout of layoffs that have affected departments ranging from design to sales.

The cuts came before the company’s membership dropped by 81,000 over the second quarter. WeWork’s new c-suite has also seen two departures – chief financial officer and chief communications officer – since the team was put in place over the spring. 

A company spokesman has repeatedly declined to specify the total number of jobs cut, which affected Europe too.

The spring cuts affected various departments and regions. 

In New York, 314 employees were laid off, per a notice filed with the state in June. The May layoffs also hit the Flatiron School, WeWork’s coding bootcamp, with 100 employees affected, largely in design and marketing, as the school winds down its design-focused programs. WeWork India cut 100 people, Reuters reported. 

As part of the May overhaul, WeWork is restructuring its community team. Staff could choose between applying for jobs or facing dismissal, per documents leaked to Business Insider.  

The major layoffs came after 250 employees were laid off in late March, unrelated to the coronavirus, per Bloomberg, and 74 were cut in San Francisco. 

In November 2019, the company laid off 2,400 employees globally, about 20% of its workforce.

The company is outsourced about 1,000 cleaning staff in the US and Canada in a change planned months before its failed IPO. In mid-April, many of those outsourced cleaning staff were laid off by JLL. 

See more:SoftBank’s brutal treatment of WeWork founder Adam Neumann shows that it has given up any hope for Silicon Valley and it’s leaving a scorched landscape in its wake

In early 2019, WeWork was privately valued at $47 billion, which made it the most valuable private startup in America. But filings for WeWork’s highly anticipated IPO revealed wide losses and left prospective investors questioning the company’s leadership and business model.

Now, it’s valued at less than $3 billion, and investors are still marking their stakes down. Fidelity said it valued the coworking giant at 55% less at the end of July than what it did at the end of March.

SoftBank, one of WeWork’s primary investors, ultimately offered a $9.5 billion package to acquire majority ownership of WeWork last year, giving former WeWork CEO and cofounder Adam Neumann a $1.7 billion deal in exchange for his departure – though the bulk of that package is now the subject of a lawsuit.

Read more:WeWork is rolling out more job cuts as the coronavirus deals the coworking giant a fresh setback. Here’s everything we know about what’s going on inside the company.