I was already planning on deleting Duolingo when I hit 1000 days just to prove a point, even though I think it's a bad app and is especially garbage for learning Asian languages, but now that I've learned they laid off a bunch of people in favor of AI it ends now, at a completely unround number. good riddance! anyway I recommend HelloChinese if you're learning Mandarin, I credit it with me passing two levels of HSK. eat shit, Duo!
I also fully deleted my account and sent a brief email explaining why. Will it make a difference? Probably not! But it mattered to me
this was posted to reddit 10 days ago, from a throwaway account that's created and posted in this linked thread and nothing else. the only proof we have is a screenshot of an email (which doesn't contain any email addresses - not that those can't be forged anyway but still, it would at least be something) that contains absolutely nothing to prove the claims of either mass contractor layoffs, or the adoption of ai-generated translations. i have also not been able to find a single reputable news publication covering this, which given that it's been 10 days since posting, you'd think someone would have jumped on the "mass layoffs at duolingo" story by now.
for all we know, this could be happening - i can't say for sure. but the evidence we have so far, at least to me, doesn't look very reliable. personally, i'd be very cautious of spreading this reddit post around until we get more details, and statements from a source that's at least a bit more reliable than a dormant throwaway reddit account.
We can confirm that some Duolingo workers have not been renewed upon the completion of their projects at the end of 2023. But these are not layoffs. This affected a small minority of Duolingo workers, as the majority have been retained,
this seems to be a case of some contractors not getting their contracts renewed. it's definitely shitty that companies can just choose to let these people go if they decide "yeah sorry we dont have anything for you to do, okay bye", but like, as much as it sucks, this is kinda how contract work plays out - you stay for as long as your contract lasts, and renewals are at employee discretion. trying to paint a few contract expirations without renewal as "mass layoffs" when that's pretty clearly not what this is doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in these claims, to me.
granted, we don't have numbers - if it turns out that duolingo is using contract expirations as a proxy for large-scale layoffs i'd be changing my tone. but again - one throwaway on reddit is all we know of so far. i'd want to see more there before i feel comfortable jumping to that conclusion
