Digg Cans 10 Percent of its Staff

​One month after a personality-driven shakeup at San Francisco-based Digg.com left co-founder Jay Adelson out on his ass, 10 percent of his former employees at the social media news site are likewise out the door.

Adelson's successor in the CEO's chair, Kevin Rose, today publicized an e-mail he'd sent around the company announcing that today was the day that he had the "difficult task" of decimating his workforce. For perhaps a dozen or so employees, today is the day they had the "difficult task" of getting laid off. When last we checked, that letter had 33 Diggs.

From Rose's letter:

This is one of the hardest decisions we've had to make recently but we strongly believe that it is the right decision for the long-term 
health of the company. In order to achieve our goals, we are putting more emphasis on the engineering and development efforts. In fact, we are still hiring for these teams as they are critical in getting us to where we need to be for the future, for our impending upcoming redesign and much beyond. The only way for us to truly succeed is to adapt and adjust as necessary.

Fair enough for the 90 percent of the folks sticking around. But for the one in 10 headed to parts unknown, it's little solace that you've been canned because keeping you around would hinder the company's ability to "truly succeed." That kinda smarts.

Incidentally, Rose recently won an SF Weekly Web Award for "Best Twitterer." Bet he could come up with some creative ways to sever ties with an employee in 140 characters or fewer.