Citing an investment in artificial intelligence technology and employee performance expectations, Intuit laid off nearly 2,000 staff on July 10, including 157 at its Eagle location in Idaho.
Intuit, the owner of TurboTax and MailChimp, purchased the Eagle site from TSheets, a digital timesheet operation, just seven years ago for $340 million, with 260 employees. In 2019, the company signed a lease to expand its operations in Eagle.
With Wednesday’s announcement, Intuit let go all the Eagle employees and closed the site. In all, 1,800 employees, 10% of the company’s workforce, were laid off across the company and two sites ? the Eagle office and one in Edmonton, Canada ? were slated to be closed permanently July 12.
“A few employees will have the option to relocate to other sites or work remotely,” an Intuit spokesperson said in an email. “All employees in the U.S. will have 60 days before they leave the company with a last day of Sept. 9, 2024.”
Intuit stated it is strategically growing its technology teams and capabilities and focusing on “key growth” sites in Atlanta, Bangalore, New York, Tel Aviv and Toronto. “These sites are resourced with product and technology teams that are accountable for end-to-end ownership of discrete technology capabilities and critical customer problems,” the spokesperson said.
In an email to employees sent by CEO Sasan Goodarzi on July 10, the executive stated that the company is in a “position of strength” and that the company had to accelerate its investments and innovations that would lead to success.
“We do not do layoffs to cut costs, and that remains true in this case,” Goodarzi stated in the email. “The changes we are making today enable us to allocate additional investments to our most critical areas to support our customers and drive growth.”
Goodarzi added that Intuit will hire approximately 1,800 new people in engineering, product and customer-facing roles.
One of the areas the company is investing in technology is a generative artificial intelligence financial product it calls “Intuit Assist,” which the CEO said, “allows us to deliver delightful ‘done-for-you’ experiences with a gateway to human expertise.”
He added that “to deliver these capabilities, we will accelerate investing in data and AI, leveraging GenOS to reimagine our products from traditional workflows to AI-native experiences that eliminate work, save time and put more money in our customers’ pockets. We are accelerating our hiring of top engineering talent across the technology ecosystem to support these investments.”
Of the 1,800 that were fired, 1,050 were “not meeting expectations and who we believe will be more successful outside of Intuit,” Goodarzi stated. Ten percent of employees who were let go held executive positions.
The U.S. employees losing their jobs will receive a severance package, the company stated, “that includes a minimum of 16 weeks of pay, plus two additional weeks for every year of service.” The company will also provide at least six months of health insurance and continued access to the employee assistance program. Intuit is also providing career transition and job placement services to the affected staff.
“It is never easy to say goodbye to our colleagues and friends and we are committed to treating everyone who has been impacted by these changes with the compassion and respect they deserve,” Goodarzi stated.
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