Year-End Telecom-IT Layoff Tracker: HP, Oracle, RingCentral, Intel, 8x8, More
We also have updates on cuts at Microsoft, Nextiva, Cisco, Salesforce, Avaya and more.
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Just a few short months after her appointment, Nextiva laid off Hilary Gadda from her role as head of partner development. She’s among numerous Nextiva workers that have been let go this month.
Nextiva laid off 14% of its workforce impacting many departments. It also reportedly cited challenging economic times. The layoffs started around Thanksgiving.
“In September I thought I had found the dream job until it wasn’t,” Gadda said in a LinkedIn post. “Like so many of my colleagues, I was laid off yesterday. I recently posted about my true tribe and how important they are to me and my success. Well, I had the good fortune in the last 90 days, to add many awesome new people to my true tribe! People I would never have met without this experience. You new true tribe members are my lemonade.”
HP is planning layoffs that will impact as many as 6,000 employees globally over the next three years.
HP made the announcement last month while reporting its fiscal year 2022 and fourth quarter earnings. For its fiscal fourth quarter, HP reported $14.8 billion in revenue, down 11% from the year-ago quarter. However, it was slightly above Wall Street’s expectation of $14.7 billion. Revenue was down 8% when adjusted for currency.
HP announced a fiscal year 2023 Future Ready Transformation plan. It aims to drive significant structural cost savings through digital transformation, portfolio optimization and operational efficiency. The company estimates that these actions will result in annualized gross run rate savings of at least $1.4 billion by the end of fiscal 2025.
In September, Avaya begun cutting jobs in its North America, Central America and Latin America offices. The company’s actions are part of significant efforts toward cost-cutting measures of $225 million-$250 million.
Laid off employees took to the site TheLayoff to anonymously voice their concerns.
“The [HR] call I was on barely lasted five minutes and was basically, ‘If you are on this call, you have been affected and today is your last day. HR will send you an email with more info,’ and for us to forward to our personal email as we will be locked out of system today. Still awaiting the HR email,” an anonymous Avaya employee wrote.
Avaya spokespersons said that implementing these measures required careful consideration and difficult choices. The company does not take decisions that impact people lightly.
In October, Microsoft reportedly initiated more layoffs, cutting close to 1,000 workers. This came as the software giant expected its fiscal first-quarter revenue growth to slow.
According to Axios, Microsoft announced layoffs across multiple divisions. It declined to say how many jobs it cut, but a source said the layoffs numbered under 1,000.
The latest Microsoft layoffs occurred across a variety of levels, teams and parts of the world.
Microsoft sent us the following statement:
“Like all companies, we evaluate our business priorities on a regular basis, and make structural adjustments accordingly. We will continue to invest in our business and hire in key growth areas in the year ahead.”
RingCentral last month cut its workforce by 10% despite a strong third-quarter performance. As of 2020, RingCentral had more than 3,000 employees.
RingCentral garnered $509 million in the third quarter, which was $94 million more than in the same quarter last year. Sales increased by 23% year over year. Even so, the company still had a GAAP operating loss of $183 million, $100 million more than quarter three of last year.
Vlad Shmunis is RingCentral’s founder, chairman and CEO. He told UC Today that it was an “extremely difficult decision” but that it would allow more agility for the company’s strategic priorities.
Shmunis didn’t specify what those priorities were.
Cisco last month announced a restructuring plan that will include layoffs in its current quarter. According to the Silicon Valley Business Journal, the layoffs have started.
Cisco’s restructuring plans cast a shadow on the strong gains the company reported in cybersecurity and software in its latest quarterly earnings. It drove $13.6 billion in revenue in the first quarter of its fiscal year 2023 – its highest quarterly revenue ever reported. That represents a 6% year-over-year increase.
The restructuring plan will “enable further investment in key priority areas,” Cisco said. That restructuring will include layoffs, as Cisco revealed that it plans to incur pre-tax charges for expenses that include severance. Cisco executives did not give a number for the number of employees impacted.
The company stated that it will execute the plan in the second quarter of fiscal year 2023, which started Nov. 1, and spend about $600 million in severance and other termination benefits as well as real estate-related charges. Approximately $300 million of the charges will occur in the second quarter of fiscal year 2023, and another $200 million in the second half of the fiscal year.
Last month, Salesforce reportedly laid off hundreds of workers and implemented a hiring freeze through January 2023.
According to TechCrunch, the company wouldn’t share an exact number, but said it was less than 1,000 workers.
Salesforce sent us the following statement: “While limited hiring continues, most departments have reached their hiring goals for the fiscal year. As a result, we have ended contracts with some temporary recruiting contractors.”
Salesforce wouldn’t comment further.
The company delivered solid third quarter fiscal 2023 earnings. Its revenue totaled $7.84 billion, up 14% year-over-year.
In October, 8×8 cut nearly 200 of its workers. Approximately 2,200 people work for the company, so these cuts represent about 10% of 8×8’s workforce.
Meghan Keough is senior vice president of product and corporate marketing at 8×8.
“As part of a normal business review, we made a small headcount reduction across functions, to drive greater operational efficiency,” she told Channel Futures in an email.
Intel‘s cost reduction plan that aims to save $3 billion next year in operating costs will include layoffs. The company seeks to slash operational expenses by up to $10 billion within three years.
Pat Gelsinger, Intel’s CEO, announced the spending cuts in October during the company’s third-quarter earnings call. In addition, Intel will reduce $2 billion in capital expenditures.
“While we are not satisfied with our results, we remain laser-focused on controlling what we can,” Gelsinger said during the company’s earnings call.
Gelsinger noted that layoffs are necessary to “optimize headcount,” which he said will add $2 billion more in savings.
“These are difficult decisions affecting our loyal Intel family,” Gelsinger said. “But we need to balance increased investment in areas like leadership and product and capacity in Ohio and Germany with the efficiency measures elsewhere as we drive to have best-in-class structures.”
Two weeks after its premier CloudWorld event, layoffs began last month at Oracle Cloud.
Business Insider reported that about 200 people have lost their jobs within Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. OCI employs around 10,000 people, so, in terms of percentages, the numbers are small, but the action is significant.
Hyoun Park, CEO and chief analyst at research firm Amalgam Insights.
“We are currently in an economic slowdown in the IT world as every major vendor is seeing delays in closing business,” he said. “Oracle has always been a disciplined company in terms of managing to the numbers, so it is no surprise to see Oracle lay off staff, even in a growth area. It is not uncommon to see tech companies reshape their talent pool with simultaneous sets of layoffs and hiring. Again, Oracle is definitely no stranger to this tactic as well. … Oracle is trying to reshape its talent portfolio to hire more from lower cost-of-living geographies when possible. Financially, Oracle would rather pay for salaries in, say, Idaho or New Hampshire, than for California and tech-heavy areas like the Research Triangle and Austin, if possible.”
In October, Cybereason cut 200 workers, or 17% of its workforce. This was the second time Cybereason cut workers in the past several months.
“This was an extremely difficult step as it impacts colleagues who supported our mission and played a part in making us a market leader,” a Cybereason spokesperson said. “While painful, we believe prioritizing profitability over growth will provide financial resilience to withstand current economic conditions.”
In June, Cybereason announced layoffs impacting 10% of its workforce in Israel, the United States and Europe, citing a closed tech initial public offering (IPO) market. Those layoffs affected about 100 workers, including dozens at its Israel headquarters, and the rest working at its offices in the United States and Europe.
Early this year, Cybereason reportedly filed for an IPO at a valuation of $5 billion. It was said to finalize underwriters for its IPO and expected a launch during the second half of this year.
In September, Twilio said it was cutting 11% of its workforce. The company notified the impacted employees via email.
Jeff Lawson, CEO of Twilio, announced the layoffs in a blog. The cuts impact Twilio workers in the United States and other countries.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat things,” he said. “A layoff is the last thing we want to do, but I believe it’s wise and necessary. Twilio has grown at an astonishing rate over the past couple years. It was too fast, and without enough focus on our most important company priorities. I take responsibility for those decisions, as well as the difficult decision to do this layoff.”
This month, Aqua Security cut 10% of its workforce as part of layoffs due to changing economic conditions.
According to its LinkedIn page, the company’s workforce totals 501-1,000. Its channel team wasn’t impacted by the layoffs.
Aqua Security CEO and co-founder Dror Davidoff announced the cuts and other changes in a blog.
“In the past 18 months, we surpassed 500 enterprise customers, doubled our team, more than doubled our revenue, acquired Argon and launched an entirely new product line, Software Supply Chain Security,” he said. “The favorable economic circumstances rewarded growth above all else, and we took advantage of it. Now, as economic conditions change, we find ourselves once again focused on the responsible path. We must consider profitability and growth, and rebalance for the new reality.”
Airtable, an enterprise software company, this month announced layoffs impacting 20% of its workforce or 254 employees.
In a blog, Howie Liu, Airtable’s co-founder and CEO, detailed the layoffs as part of a “major” evolution for Airtable.
In May, Zoom vet Laura Padilla joined Airtable as vice president of partners. Airtable hired her to formalize its channel strategy and partner program. Airtable isn’t saying whether she’s among those impacted by the layoffs. Her LInkedIn profile still lists her in that position.
Airtable’s chief revenue officer, Seth Shaw, chief people officer, Johanna Jackman. and chief product officer, Peter Deng, also departed the company.
“Today we’re announcing a major evolution for Airtable: taking us from our roots as a primarily bottoms-up adopted product serving teams at organizations of many sizes, to a company that is focused on bringing connected apps to large enterprises,” Liu said. “With this new focus, we’ve made the difficult choice to reduce our team by 254 people and evolve our organizational structure. These steps are not a reflection of this team’s important work in building Airtable to date, but about what our organization needs going forward.”
Elastic has laid off 13% of its workforce, or nearly 390 workers globally, citing decreased customer spending.
As of April 30, the security, observability and search vendor had nearly 3,000 employees in more than 40 countries globally. In addition to the layoffs, Elastic is reducing costs in other areas, including optimizing how it uses office space.
Elastic CEO Ash Kulkarni posted a blog detailing the layoffs.
“We are fortunate that security, observability and search are mission-critical to our customers,” he said. “However, it has become clear that the global macroeconomic environment is forcing our customers to tighten budgets and review investments more closely. This is especially true in certain segments of the market like small and medium businesses where the current appetite to spend in uncertain times is limited.”
Asana, a work management software provider, initiated mass layoffs last month impacting nearly 100 workers. The company is based and the layoffs occurred in San Francisco.
Asana employed 1,666 employees as of Jan. 31.
Asana sent us the following statement:
“Today, Asana announced the difficult decision to reduce our force, impacting about 9%, of the global team, as part of a restructuring plan intended to improve our operational efficiencies and operating costs, and better align Asana’s workforce with current business needs, top strategic priorities and key growth opportunities. We are supporting our departing team and remain so grateful for each person’s contribution to Asana.”
Last month, Gradient MSP laid off workers as the company revamps its go-to-market (GTM) model and readies itself for an economic downturn.
Gradient founder and CEO Colin Knox confirmed to Channel Futures that 20 people are no longer working for the company. The affected positions include channel engagement champions, the vice president of product and engineering, and events managers.
Knox said the layoffs reflect a slight shift in the company’s business model, especially its go-to-market strategy.
“Over 2022, we purposefully invested heavily in conference sponsorships and community engagement. Our intent was to rapidly build brand recognition and reach wide with our freemium platform. Heading into 2023, our investment in conferences is being reduced as we focus our GTM from predominantly engagement to traditional sales,” Knox said.
In October, Seagate Technology announced layoffs impacting 3,000 workers, or 8% of its worldwide workforce. The layoffs are part of a restructuring plan.
Dave Mosley is Seagate’s CEO.
“Global economic uncertainties and broad-based customer inventory corrections worsened in the latter stages of the September quarter,” he said. “And these dynamics are reflected in both near-term industry demand and Seagate’s financial performance. We have taken quick and decisive actions to respond to current market conditions and enhance long-term profitability, including adjusting our production output and annual capital expenditure plans, and announcing a restructuring plan that will deliver meaningful cost savings while maintaining investments in the mass capacity solutions driving our future growth.”
Seagate aims to reduce its cost structure to better align its operational needs to current economic conditions while continuing to support the long-term business strategy. The plan includes the layoffs along with other cost-saving measures
Seagate should complete its restructuring by the end of its fiscal second quarter.
In September, IronNet initiated more layoffs, cutting nearly 90 employees, or 35% of its workforce, and co-CEO William Welch and CFO James Gerber left the company.
“On Sept. 14, 2022, the company announced that it plans to undertake a restructuring that will include a reduction to its current headcount of approximately 250 employees by approximately 35%,” IronNet said. “The company expects to substantially complete this workforce reduction by the end of September 2022. As a result of this workforce reduction, the company expects to incur a pre-tax cash charge for one-time termination benefits, which consist of severance and related costs, of approximately $1 million. The company expects such costs to be the only direct expense of the workforce reduction.”
The workforce reduction was part of a broader plan by IronNet to reduce overall expenses and preserve cash.
In June, IronNet confirmed it was cutting 55 workers, or 17% of its workforce. It planned to complete that workforce reduction by the end of June.
Citing a “challenging macroeconomic environment, N-able, the MSP and IT management software provider, just this week said it was cutting an undisclosed number of workers.
Records show N-able had 1,400 employees at the end of 2021.
It’s been just a year-and-a-half since SolarWinds completed its spinoff of N-able, which is now an independent, publicly traded company.
N-able CEO John Pagliuca told Channel Futures that a combination of job reduction and restructuring will impact 5% or the company’s workforce around the world.
Citing a “challenging macroeconomic environment, N-able, the MSP and IT management software provider, just this week said it was cutting an undisclosed number of workers.
Records show N-able had 1,400 employees at the end of 2021.
It’s been just a year-and-a-half since SolarWinds completed its spinoff of N-able, which is now an independent, publicly traded company.
N-able CEO John Pagliuca told Channel Futures that a combination of job reduction and restructuring will impact 5% or the company’s workforce around the world.
HP, Oracle, RingCentral, Intel, 8×8, Microsoft and Nextiva are among the rush of companies doing business in the channel that have shed workers during the past few months, according to our latest layoff tracker. It’s reached such a fever pitch that news of layoffs is breaking almost daily.
Geopolitical uncertainty and economic indicators pointing to continued economic headwinds in 2023 have prompted a number of tech employers to cut back on their existing workforces and freeze hiring. Furthermore, some of the layoffs are occurring despite profitable quarters and strong outlooks.
Displaced workers could find new opportunities. According to Janco and Associates, the layoffs haven’t slowed IT job market growth. November saw an increase in the number of new IT jobs created. Most of those positions were non-management positions.
The November IT job market includes some 12,500 new positions. Furthermore, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) adjusted its number of jobs for the prior two months — up 3,000 from original estimates.
According to the latest BLS data, analyzed by Janco, there are now just shy of 4 million jobs for IT professionals in the United States. For 27 months in a row, there has been an increase in the number of jobs added to the IT job market. Janco sees this trend continuing, but at a slower pace.
Still, an increasing number of channel businesses are handing out pink slips as economic headwinds swirl with no apparent end in sight.
Scroll through our layoff tracker above for a recap of cuts that have occurred during the past few months.
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