Photo by Donnie Weatherhead

Photo by Donnie Weatherhead

Less than a year after LivingSocial cut 20 percent of its workforce, they’ve decided to … cut 20 percent of their workforce.

The one-time powerhouse has been in a state of steady decline for years. To stem the tide, the company’s executives have decided to re-position themselves away from daily deals to something they have taken to calling an “experiences marketplace.”

Cutting approximately 200 employees is “difficult,” president and CEO Gautam Thakar said in a release, “yet it allows us to operate more efficiently, while focusing our investments into accelerating progress toward our mission of becoming a leading experiences marketplace.”

As examples of what they mean, Living Social cites two recent pilot programs: one in Atlanta called Restaurants Plus that links registered credit cards to automatic deals, and a second in Austin called FastBook, an online booking tool for beauty services.

Last time, the company slashed 400 positions (100 in their D.C. offices) as part of a “corporate reorganization” designed to “fund areas of growth—namely technology, data science and mobile.”

According to the Washington Business Journal, about 30 of this round of layoffs will come from LivingSocial’s D.C. headquarters. That leaves a little more than 300 employees working there.

At one time, LivingSocial expected their upward trajectory to include as many as 2,000 jobs in the District—part of a controversial $32.5 million tax break deal that then Mayor Vincent Gray struck with the company. But they haven’t hit the goals necessary to take advantage of the tax incentives.

Meanwhile, the D.C. Council spent the day discussing another controversial tax break proposal, a $60 million deal that Mayor Muriel Bowser has proposed to keep the The Advisory Board Company in town.

The timing wasn’t lost.

Filed Under: layoffs, living social, tax deal,