San Francisco, Dec 13 (IANS): Online education company for developers and IT professionals, Pluralsight, which was recently valued at more than $1 billion has announced to lay off 20 per cent of its global workforce, about 400 employees.

CEO Aaron Skonnard said in an email to employees he owns this outcome and "take full responsibility for the decisions that got us here".

"I've spoken to all of you this year about the challenging economic environment we're operating in and how it has affected our business performance," he wrote.

Unfortunately, these challenges have only accelerated in Q4 and, as a result, "today we are restructuring and reducing the size of our team, impacting roughly 20 per cent of our team members", he said late on Monday.

Founded in 2004, Pluralsight had a net loss of $163.5 million in 2019 and $164 million in 2020, according to the US SEC documents.

The CEO said that those impacted "can also look for additional communication from your executive about special All-Hands meetings for each organization later this week".

"I'm sorry for the impact this will have on many of you, we've let you down during a difficult time," he added.

Pluralsight is an online education company that offers a variety of video training courses for software developers, IT administrators, and creative professionals through its website.