Pinterest has fired two engineers who developed a software tool to identify colleagues who were hit by a recent wave of layoffs and then shared that data.
Pinterest has fired two engineers who developed a software tool to identify colleagues who were hit by a recent wave of layoffs and then shared that data.
In late January , Pinterest announced it was cutting 15% of its workforce , or about 700 people. After that, two of the company's engineers wrote code to identify the laid-off employees, The Guardian reports .
A company spokesperson said: “Two engineers wrote custom scripts that improperly accessed confidential company information to determine the location and names of all terminated employees, and then distributed this data. This was a clear violation of Pinterest policies and the privacy rights of their former colleagues.”
But the company did not explain whether these engineers shared the information with their colleagues or with people outside Pinterest.
According to the BBC, citing an anonymous source, the script targeted internal employee communication tools and reportedly generated alerts whenever employee names were removed from the system or their accounts were deactivated.
At a general meeting, the CEO stated that Pinterest was going through a “critical moment” and that employees should consider working elsewhere if they were “working against the direction of the company” and disagreed with its mission.
