Pinterest sacks two engineers after layoffs tracking crossed privacy lines

Pinterest has sacked two engineers after they tracked which colleagues lost their jobs during a recent round of layoffs, crossing what the company said were clear privacy and policy boundaries.

The dismissals followed Pinterest’s announcement that it would cut around 15% of its workforce, or roughly 700 roles, as part of a broader restructuring tied to an increased focus on artificial intelligence. Chief executive Bill Ready told staff the company was “doubling down on an AI-forward approach”, an internal message later shared publicly by an employee.

While Pinterest did not disclose which teams or individuals were affected by the cuts, two engineers went further. They wrote custom scripts that improperly accessed confidential internal data to identify the names and locations of dismissed employees, a company spokesperson told the BBC.

“This was a clear violation of Pinterest policy and of their former colleagues’ privacy,” the spokesperson said.

A script, in this context, is computer code designed to automate tasks or extract information from existing systems. According to a person familiar with the firings, who asked not to be identified, the engineers targeted internal communication tools used by staff.

The scripts reportedly flagged when employee names were removed or deactivated from systems similar to workplace messaging platforms such as Slack, offering insight into who had been impacted by the layoffs. The information was then shared more widely within the company, the source said.

The identities of the two engineers have not been made public, and the BBC said it was unable to contact them for comment.

The incident highlights the heightened sensitivity around internal data and employee privacy during layoffs, particularly in the technology sector, where informal monitoring of internal tools has become a common — if unofficial — way for staff to track departures.

Pinterest’s job cuts came amid a wider wave of redundancies across the industry. In the same week, Amazon announced the elimination of 16,000 roles in its second round of layoffs in three months. Meta has also cut several hundred jobs this year, while Google, Microsoft and other large technology groups have reduced headcount.

Across the global tech sector, an estimated 700,000 jobs have been lost over the past four years, according to Layoffs.fyi, a site that tracks reported redundancies.

For companies navigating large-scale restructuring, the Pinterest episode underscores a growing challenge: balancing transparency with privacy, and enforcing internal data controls at a time when anxiety and scrutiny inside organisations are running high.