Silicon Valley Workers Are Using This App to Share Their Layoff Speculations and Woes in Secret Blind's anonymity means verified employees can be more honest than ever before.

By Amanda Breen

NurPhoto | Getty Images

There's an increasingly popular professional networking site on the scene — and it's not LinkedIn.

Silicon Valley employees have signed up for Blind, an anonymous community app for the workplace, by the thousands amid recent layoffs, using the service to speculate about job cuts and offer words of comfort, CNN reported.

Related: Tech CEO Apologizes After 'Tone Deaf' Layoff Email Quoting MLK Jr.

Roughly 6,000 Microsoft employees signed up for the app in the week before the company publicly announced it would slash 10,000 jobs, and Meta and Google each have tens of thousands of verified workers on the app, per internal data shared with the outlet by Blind.

As of April 2022, Blind, which launched in the U.S. in 2014, already had more than 5 million verified employees discussing their employers and policies, according to CNBC. Paul Wolfe, former CHRO of Indeed, told the outlet Blind was "more conversational" than Indeed or Glassdoor — which can result in more "bashing of companies."

"We just all realized that there's a need for communication that is kind of independent of company control," Kyum Kim, Blind's co-founder and chief business officer, told CNN. "Because when employees talk to each other in a work setting, they can't be honest – and they have to always kind of be self conscious about what the boss is going to think, or what other people are going to think."

Related: Layoffs Affecting 1,600 Tech Workers A Day on Average In 2023

A recent post on the app from someone claiming to be a current Amazon employee delves into the lessons learned when they were laid off from Uber at the onset of the pandemic — and how they overcame feelings of failure. It has nearly 100,000 views.

Amanda Breen

BIZ Experiences Staff

Senior Features Writer

Amanda Breen is a senior features writer at BIZ Experiences.com. She is a graduate of Barnard College and received an MFA in writing at Columbia University, where she was a news fellow for the School of the Arts.

Want to be an BIZ Experiences Leadership Network contributor? Apply now to join.

Starting a Business

These Brothers Started a Business to Improve an Everyday Task. They Made Their First Products in the Garage — Now They've Raised Over $100 Million.

Coulter and Trent Lewis had an early research breakthrough that helped them solve for the right problem.

Business Ideas

70 Small Business Ideas to Start in 2025

We put together a list of the best, most profitable small business ideas for BIZ Experiencess to pursue in 2025.

Franchise

How to Prepare Your Business — And Yourself — For a Smooth Exit

After decades of building your business, turning it over to someone else can be emotional. But with the right mindset and a strong plan, it can also be your proudest moment.

Franchise

10 No-Office-Required Businesses You Can Start for as Little as $5,000

With strong Franchise 500 rankings and investment levels starting under $5,000, these brands are ready for new owners to hit the ground running.

Business News

Here Are the 10 Jobs AI Is Most Likely to Automate, According to a Microsoft Study

These careers are most likely to be affected by generative AI, based on data from 200,000 conversations with Microsoft's Copilot chatbot.