Many of us have really good friends and colleagues at Moz. In fact, I've known Rand Fishkin since before there was a Moz/SEOMoz, he and the people who work at Moz are genuinely good people. So when I heard the news last night that they posted on their blog that they are "Doubling Down on Search," which means they are cutting out Moz Content and Followerwonk - I was initially excited.
But then I kept on reading and they said that means 28% of their staff was let go. I had to imagine it was just the staff working on the non search related activities. But I was surprised to hear that the whole Moz community team, the ones who you speak to daily and who facilitate the Moz brand and discussions around search, were also let go.
One of the most prominent folks there, the director of community at Moz, Jennifer Sable Lopez, was let go too. And she didn't seem to have nice things to say about it, as you would imagine. Honestly, it kind of feels like when Microsoft let Duane Forrester go from Bing. I mean, they eventually rehired him and he then left after but it feels almost the same way.
Jennifer said on Twitter, "One thing missing from this post: Moz is also changing the Marketing focus away from Community." Yes, there was NO mention of the community team going away in the post. Richard Millington also said it on Twitter:
"dear community, we wouldn't be here without you...
— Richard Millington (@RichMillington) August 17, 2016
...which is why we're killing the community team"
One thing missing from this post: Moz is also changing the Marketing focus away from Community https://t.co/YNOu84zQGh
— Jennifer Sable Lopez (@jennita) August 17, 2016
@gfiorelli1 makes money though, eh?
— Jennifer Sable Lopez (@jennita) August 17, 2016
Rand Fishkin is currently overseas speaking but he was pretty active responding to questions. The thing is, he isn't running Moz and making these decisions. He is aware of them and is supportive. He has not mentioned anything about the community team there. He did say the decision was about becoming cash flow positive.
@Mirelaimm we need to get to cash flow positive & have too large a team for that to make sense sadly.
— Rand Fishkin (@randfish) August 17, 2016
I know this is crushing for those who have been let go, those who had to make the decision to let people go and honestly, it is a bit of a blow the SEO community at large. But it is all fresh news and hopefully everyone will look back at this and say it was for the best. I hope those who lost their jobs find better ones. I hope the community there finds a way to continue to grow without a community team at Moz. I hope the software, now that there is a search only focus, gets better and better. And I hope this leads to a company that can be self sufficient on its own cash flow and not VC money.
https://t.co/YA1PymuoWD - behind you 100% @SarahBird. I know it's a hard day.
— Rand Fishkin (@randfish) August 17, 2016
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Updated the title of this story to say "laid off" instead of "fired." I used "fired" because it was shorter but it has upset some people, that was not my intention."
