Pinterest sacks engineers who tracked AI-based job cuts Workers accused of 'improperly accessing' confidential info. By Tom Williams on Feb 05 2026 12:23 PM Print article Pinterest alleges the fired engineers violated company policy and staff privacy. Image: Shutterstock Pinterest has laid off two engineers who allegedly built software to track which employees had lost their jobs in recent layoffs, as the social media company prioritises “AI-focused roles and teams”. While the identities of the two engineers are not publicly known, they reportedly wrote computer code which scanned internal tools to monitor which employees had their accounts removed, and had thereby been laid off. A Pinterest spokesperson told Information Age, "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 policy and of their former colleagues' privacy.” Pinterest CEO Bill Ready reportedly described the fired workers as “obstructionist” during an all-staff meeting on Friday. “Healthy debate and dissent are expected, that’s how we make our decisions,” he told employees, according to reporting by CNBC. “But there’s a clear line between constructive debate and behavior that’s obstructionist.” Pinterest executives announced in late January that the company would lay off almost 15 per cent of its global workforce, or roughly 700 positions, and reduce some office space as part of a major restructuring. The popular image-sharing app planned to finish this work by the end of September 2026 to prioritise “AI-focused roles and teams” and “AI‑powered products and capabilities”, it said in a securities filing. Sacked Pinterest designer says she was 'told not to worry' about AI layoffs Designer Bonnie Kate Wolf wrote on LinkedIn that she had lost her job in the latest round of Pinterest cuts, despite being "told not to worry” about the prospect of potential redundancies due to the company’s increasing focus on AI. Wolf, who claimed she had worked on some AI projects at Pinterest, said she told her manager in 2025 that she was “worried about AI-based layoffs”. “I was told not to worry,” Wolf wrote. “At an onsite, we were told that ‘in the future’, we would all be ‘managers of AIs’. “That I would be expected to manage some sort of AI employees, rather than craft and design my own work.” Pinterest is a pinboard-based platform in which users can share images and videos. Image: Shutterstock Wolf said Pinterest's CEO had told staff in an email that the company was, in his words, “doubling down on an AI-forward approach — prioritising AI-focused roles, teams, and ways of working”. Facing immense competition from the AI shopping and ads businesses of companies such as Google and OpenAI — and with Pinterest’s share price down around 40 per cent over the past 12 months — Ready reportedly told staff the company would not tolerate “obstructionism”. “Especially when we have a mission that is so meaningful but also where the odds are stacked against us,” the chief executive allegedly told Friday's all-staff meeting. “We think we can beat those odds, but as a small purpose-driven player competing against the largest companies in the history of the world, the only way that we succeed is if we work together, constructively, with clarity and focus.” Companies scale back staff to focus on AI Numerous large companies have scaled back their workforces in recent years while shifting their focus to integrating generative AI technologies. Amazon, which cut 14,000 roles in October 2025 after its CEO said AI meant the firm “will need fewer people” in some roles, accidentally warned employees of more cuts in late January before confirming 16,000 more redundancies. HP announced thousands of job cuts in December as it planned to increase its investments in AI, while consultancy giant Accenture doubled down on only keeping employees who succesfully used AI in their work. In Australia, Canva laid off most of its technical writing team in 2025, while Atlassian carried out some layoffs when it acquired an AI browser company and an AI-focused developer productivity platform. Australian government studies have found the rise of generative AI has led to some employers hiring fewer junior workers, while jobs in data entry, record-keeping, accounting, and communications have become some of the most vulnerable to potential automation. Tom Williams Tom Williams is a senior journalist at Information Age with key interests in consumer technology, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, cybersecurity, and telecommunications. He was previously a digital journalist at ABC News, where he covered technology and breaking news. You can follow Tom on Bluesky, LinkedIn, or Threads, contact him at [email protected], and send tip-offs via secure email to [email protected]. Tags: pinterest ai artificial intelligence