- By Kamakshi Bishnoi
- Thu, 05 Feb 2026 08:12 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
Pinterest has allegedly fired its two employees for creating an internal tool to track which of its employees has been laid off, on Friday, last week. The two decided to create the tool after the company announced a reduction in its workflow, citing significant investment in Artificial Intelligence.
As per the company officials, the platform decided to lay off over 15 per cent of its employees, which would impact over 700 roles. No department was mentioned in the announcement. To track which employees have been selected for the process, two of the company officials created an internal tool.
“After being clearly informed that Pinterest would not broadly share information identifying impacted employees, two engineers wrote custom scripts improperly accessing confidential company information to identify the locations and names of all dismissed employees and then shared it more broadly. This was a clear violation of Pinterest's policy and of their former colleagues' privacy,” the spokesperson told BBC.
Speaking at the companywide meeting last week, Pinterest CEO, Bill Ready, criticised action of the two employees, saying that disagreement is acceptable but within limits.
“Healthy debate and dissent are expected, that’s how we make our decisions,” Ready said, according to audio obtained by CNBC. “But there’s a clear line between constructive debate and behaviour that’s obstructionist.”
However, a few employees reported to CNBC that the incident had been presented wrongly, and the engineers were fired after sharing instructions on how to prompt an internal staff directory to reveal which employees had been laid off.
As per the employees, Pinterest’s assertion that the engineers had built custom software was misleading, adding that the directory tool is available to all staff.