Prusa 3D lays off nearly twenty five percent of developers due to financial issues  

Prusa 3D lays off nearly twenty five percent of developers due to financial issues

I recently received a screenshot from a friend who was unfortunately part of the twenty five percent affected by recent layoffs at Prusa 3D. I'm sure many others can confirm that this screenshot is legitimate.
Unfortunately, the screenshot is in Czech, so I’ve translated it into English:
Hi!

I have an important message for you today that I am not writing easily. But it is necessary. Over the past few years, our team has been growing every year with new colleagues, and we are currently 1144 people. The company has grown, but with many new projects, our team grew as well - and faster than the business itself. We have reached a situation where our costs are increasing faster than our revenues. And that no longer makes sense.

At the same time, we are in a situation where, since the beginning of the year, we have not been meeting sales targets even by 90%. With high fixed costs, increasing competition, a drop in the value of the dollar, and other factors that we can’t all influence, it’s quite an unfavorable combination. We are all, of course, looking forward to INDX, but as part of this year’s plans, there are also other important products that, like INDX, are not yet ready - so they might be delayed, further threatening our ability to meet targets. Overall, we are taking on unnecessarily large risks, and it is necessary to address this.

Part of the next steps will be, among other things, a reduction in the number of positions. It’s a difficult decision, but we are making it to stabilize the company. This will inevitably impact the composition of some teams in Prague and the associated downsizing. The exception is operator positions - there, we are continuously optimizing efficiency and are currently in line with sales targets, so no major changes are planned there.I know you have a lot of questions right now. Each of you will learn about this in the coming days from your team leaders.

At the same time, we are starting to implement a more general cost control process. This will happen gradually over the next weeks and months, and the measures will be the same for all companies. The goal is simple - to bring our margins back to where they were in 2024.We have never done anything like this before. But it is a normal thing that companies that grow rapidly must occasionally do to stay healthy.And one last thing - I honestly admit that we should have addressed this situation last year. We hoped that our plans would be met, but hope is not hard data, which is what we should have been following. We misjudged it, and that’s our mistake, from which we are learning. At the same time, we are still very optimistic for this year, thanks to the arrival of INDX and the general push toward local manufacturing self-sufficiency. We just need to be as well-prepared as possible.

Ondřej and Josef (the one from the USA)