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Pinterest fires engineers for building ‘secret’ tool find out employees laid off due to AI

Last week, Pinterest revealed plans to cut about 15 per cent of its workforce, roughly 700 roles.

2 min readNew DelhiFeb 5, 2026 01:07 PM IST

The controversy erupted when two engineers created a way to track employees impacted by the layoffs (Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

Pinterest sacked its two employees for developing an internal tool to find out which staff members had been laid off, a move that comes after the company announced significant workforce reductions to prioritise investments in artificial intelligence (AI).

Last week, the social media platform revealed plans to cut about 15 per cent of its workforce, roughly 700 roles. The company did not specify which teams would be affected, CBS News reported.

The controversy erupted when two engineers created a way to track employees impacted by the layoffs. A company spokesperson said the pair had accessed and circulated sensitive information without authorisation.

“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,” the spokesperson told BBC.

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

Pinterest CEO Bill Ready also criticised the employees’ actions. Speaking at a companywide meeting last week, he emphasised that disagreement is acceptable but only within certain 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.”

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The engineers were terminated on Friday. During the meeting, Ready defended the decision, saying employees who fundamentally oppose the company’s direction should consider looking for work elsewhere.

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However, some Pinterest staff disputed the company’s account of events in conversations with CNBC. According to them, the engineers were sacked after sharing guidance on how to use an internal staff directory to determine which employees had been laid off.

They also claimed that Pinterest’s suggestion that custom software had been built was misleading, arguing that the directory tool is already accessible to all employees.