F5 is laying off employees working for the company’s marketing-related content production team, GeekWire has learned.
The Seattle-based company confirmed the cuts, and said they impacted less than 0.25% of its workforce. F5 has about 6,500 employees worldwide.
F5 is shifting marketing resources and will rely more heavily on agencies for creative and content needs.
The application delivery company has made a recent push to use generative AI tools for content production, according to one worker we spoke with who was impacted by the layoffs.
Marketing and sales is seeing the most adoption of generative AI tools across all company functions, according to a recent McKinsey survey. Large companies such as Microsoft and smaller startups are rolling out new generative AI tools designed for marketing tasks such as content creation.
Layoffs hit the tech industry hard during 2022 and 2023 amid higher interest rates and more cautious spending. More than 260,000 tech employees were laid off last year, and more than 137,000 were cut this year so far, according to Layoffs.fyi.