Daily US Times, Boston: Online store company Wayfair is laying off a 3% layoff of its global workforce, which estimates to be more than 500 employees.

A company spokesman said most of the layoff will happen in its Boston headquarters. The spokesperson pointed the number could be 350.

Boston Globe reports that a group of employees in the Berlin office was also laid off on Tuesday. Wayfair has more than 17,000 workers worldwide.

A spokesman of the company issued a statement, saying:

To position the organization to take advantage of the opportunity ahead, we continually evaluate the needs of the business and work to increase efficiencies while aligning our teams with the initiatives that drive the greatest impact for our customers.

As part of that process, we have made some organizational changes that affect approximately three percent of our global workforce. We are continuing to hire for the many roles needed to drive our long-term success and the continued growth of the business. We remain as confident as ever in Wayfair’s future and our steadfast focus on delighting our customers with the best experience for home.

A Wayfair engineer, who wants to be anonymous in the media, said that the layoffs are being described by workers as the “Valentine’s Day massacre.”

On Thursday morning, the CEO of the company, Niraj Shah informed Wayfair laying off to the employees in a company-wide email.

He wrote in that email: “Since we founded the company in 2002 we have always had periods where we invested very heavily in the business and periods where we have worked to drive greater efficiency of all our resources. On reflection, this last period of investment went on too long (as an example, doubling our OpEx team from 4,000 to 8,000 in just two years) and we find ourselves at a place where we are, from an execution standpoint, investing in too many disparate areas, with an uneven quality and speed of execution.”

The said approximately 550 people will depart Wayfair.