When tech companies look for ways to optimize operations, respond to changing market conditions, re-adjust priorities, or even shut down their operation, the impact on employee livelihood can be big. CRN looks at 10 of the most significant tech layoffs that have made their mark so far in 2024.
IT Sector Layoffs Still Happening In 2024
The U.S. unemployment rate has been fairly steady in the last year, and currently dances around a mere 4.3 percent, according to the latest from the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics.
With low unemployment overall, and low expectations of any significant increase in the foreseeable future, it sometimes seems the headlines about tech layoffs may be overblown. This seems especially true given that so many layoffs happen at tech companies that are also still very much in hiring mode.
Tech companies lay off employees for any of several reasons, including optimizing their operations, responding to changing market conditions, re-adjusting their priorities, or, in the worst-case scenario, closing the entire business or certain parts of it.
[Related: Tech Company Layoffs In 2024: The Latest Cuts In Q1]
CRN looks at 10 of the most important tech layoffs of 2024 so far, with a focus on layoffs in companies whose businesses impact indirect channels. Therefore, while a significant layoff may happen at a video streaming company’s internal IT team, it is not listed here.
The list is based on the actual number of layoffs where available, and on announced layoffs where the actual number is not available. Also, the number of actual layoffs can change, either as cuts go a bit deeper than expected or as companies hire new employees after the cuts.
Also, this list of tech layoffs is focused on absolute numbers of employees whose positions were eliminated, not on how big the impacts on the companies as a whole are. So while a company like Ora Security in January unveiled a large 15-percent reduction in headcount, a total of 60 employees were impacted, and so it did not make the list.
Wade Millward, CJ Fairfield, Rick Whiting, Gina Narcisi, O’Ryan Johnson, and Mark Haranas contributed to this article.
Amazon Web Services: ‘Hundreds’ Of Layoffs
Amazon Web Services, the world’s largest cloud company, in April unveiled a plan to cut hundreds of jobs in its sales, marketing, and global services organization while also laying off hundreds of employees from Amazon’s physical stores technology team. These layoffs will mostly affect training, certification and sales personnel, AWS confirmed to CRN, saying the layoffs were needed to “streamline” some business units while shifting efforts toward more “key strategic areas.”
“Once all processes related to this action are complete, we expect these role eliminations to impact several hundred roles in specific areas of the sales, marketing, and global services organization and a few hundred roles in the physical stores technology team,” an AWS spokesperson said in an email to CRN.
The spokesperson said AWS has “identified a few targeted areas of the organization we need to streamline in order to continue focusing our efforts on the key strategic areas that we believe will deliver maximum impact.”
AWS is also laying off hundreds of employees from its physical stores technology teams as a result of a broader strategic shift in the use of some applications in Amazon’s own stores as well as in third-party stores, the AWS spokesperson said. These layoffs will affect AWS developer teams who create technology for Amazon’s physical retail stores.
AWS stressed that although it is laying off hundreds of employees, the company is looking to hire thousands of new employees in priority areas. “While we are eliminating roles in parts of these teams, we’re hiring for priorities in other areas,” the AWS spokesperson told CRN. “We are continuing to hire and grow, especially in core areas of our business. Right now, for example, there are thousands of jobs posted across AWS.”
UiPath: 420 Layoffs
About a month after changing CEOs, business automation platform provider UiPath in July revealed a planned headcount reduction of 10 percent, or about 420 employees. The company said in a regulatory filing that most of the cuts should happen by the end of the first quarter of fiscal year 2026, or April 2025.
“This workforce reduction is aimed at further driving operational efficiency and customer centricity,” according to the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). “These changes reflect efforts to reshape the organization by streamlining the Company’s structure, particularly in operational and corporate functions, better prioritizing our go-to-market investments and focusing our research and development investments on artificial intelligence and driving innovation across our platform.”
UiPath plans to spend between $15 million and $20 million on employee termination benefits and between $2 million to $5 million on lease exit and other contractual costs, according to the vendor.
Cloud Software Group: 1,000 Layoffs
Cloud Software Group, the parent of cloud vendor Citrix, in January said it laid off about 12 percent of its workforce as part of a plan to streamline the company. CSG was expected to hire additional employees in parts of the business, but in the parts where jobs were cut, the company took “a pragmatic look at those places where we simply need fewer or different resources,” according to a LinkedIn post by CEO Tom Krause.
“Cloud Software Group is committed to building a foundation of sustainable value creation for our customers and partners,” Krause said in the post. “To those impacted, thank you for your contributions in the first year of Cloud Software Group. These decisions are never taken lightly, but are necessary to build the strongest foundation possible for the future.”
In his post, Krause said the company working with partners who will rehire many of its impacted employees in such areas as operations, security, and IT functions to continue providing outsourced services to Cloud Software Group.
A CSG spokesperson told CRN that the company cut about 1,000 employees worldwide across business units and corporate teams. About 500 of those employees should get “rehired in an outsourced capacity.”
This latest round of layoffs comes exactly a year after CSG cut 15 percent of its workforce, thousands of jobs, with plans for Citrix to focus on its top 1,000 customers and leave mid-tier and commercial accounts for service and support by solution providers.
Salesforce: 1,000 Layoffs
Salesforce in January unveiled plans to lay off 700 employees, or about 1 percent of the company, according to multiple news reports. That round of layoffs followed the 10-percent employee reduction it made in early 2023.
Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal reported on the layoffs. Salesforce still has 1,000 open positions across the company, according to The Wall Street Journal. The move is possibly part of a routine workforce adjustment instead of a strategic shift.
Bloomberg in July reported that Salesforce laid off another 300 employees that month as part of a broader effort to streamline operations.
OpenText: 1,200 Layoffs
OpenText, a supplier of a wide range of cybersecurity, AI and other IT management solutions for MSPs, plans to lay off 1,200 employees and add 800 positions as part of a “business optimization plan” to support its “growth and innovation plans,” according to a July 3 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Overall, the business optimization plan, which is intended to strategically align the company’s workforce, is expected to result in a 1.7 percent reduction of its workforce to approximately 23,000 employees.
The business optimization plan also is expected to result in annualized cost savings of approximately $200 million for the $4.5 billion MSP software behemoth. At the same time, the company is reinvesting approximately $50 million annually for approximately 800 new roles in sales, professional services and engineering.
Microsoft Azure: 1,500 Layoffs
Microsoft is reportedly laying off hundreds of employees in Azure and its mixed reality businesses. Business Insider reported in June that Microsoft will cut as many as 1,500 in Azure for Operators and Mission Engineering. This is part of Microsoft’s Strategic Missions and Technologies (SMT) organization led by Jason Zander, the former executive vice president of Microsoft Azure.
A Microsoft spokesperson told CRN in a statement that “organizational and workforce adjustments are a necessary and regular part of managing our business. We will continue to prioritize and invest in strategic growth areas for our future and in support of our customers and partners.”
Business Insider separately reported that Zander credited the layoffs to Microsoft putting more investment into artificial intelligence, halting previews for Azure Operator 5G Core (AO5GC) and Azure Operator Call Protection. Employees working on The Azure Operator Nexus will join the Cloud + AI organizations’ Azure Edge and Platform product line, according to Business Insider.
In a move that does not directly impact the company’s B2B business, Microsoft in January also laid off about 1,900 employees in its Activision Blizzard and Xbox divisions, TechCrunch reported.
Xerox: 3,100 Layoffs
Xerox Holdings Corp. in January said it would cut 15 percent of its workforce, a little more than 3,000 employees, during that quarter as the printer and copier giant announced a new operation model and shift in organizational structure. Xerox had 20,700 employees as of June 2023, according to a regulatory filing last August, which would mean about 3,100 jobs cut. Xerox declined to comment on what departments and regions were impacted.
“The evolution of Xerox’s reinvention aligns our resources in three key areas – improvement and stabilization of our core print business, increased productivity and efficiency through the formation of a new Global Business Services organization, and disciplined execution in revenue diversification,” said Xerox CEO Steven Bandrowczak in a statement.
A Xerox spokesperson told CRN in an email that the “proposed reductions will be subject to formal consultation with local works councils and employee representative bodies where applicable. The decision to reduce our global workforce was a difficult but necessary step toward establishing long-term viability for Xerox. Xerox is committed to providing transition support for affected employees.”
Cisco: More Than 9,000 Employees Laid Off So Far This Year
Cisco Systems said in February that it saw “greater degrees of caution” related to product ordering during its fiscal Q2 in 2024, which lowered product revenues. At the same time, the tech giant confirmed that it would be cutting jobs globally to adjust expenses and investments to reflect the current macro environment, Cisco Chair and CEO Chuck Robbins told investors during the company’s fiscal Q2 2024 earnings call on Wednesday evening.
Cisco in its second quarter filings announced a companywide layoff that would impact about 5 percent of its workforce, or about 4,250 employees, as it works to realign its organization to focus on “key priority” areas.
The tech giant expects to recognize about $800 million in charges associated with the restructuring, which Cisco said was largely related to severance and other one-time termination benefits. The majority of the costs are expected to occur in the third fiscal quarter and will continue into the first half of the company’s fiscal 2025.
In August, Cisco said that it would eliminate about 7 percent of its workforce and take a $1 billion hit from costs related to severance, one-time termination benefits and other expenses. Although Cisco didn’t specify an exact number of employees who would be laid off, Cisco’s February layoff of about 4,000 employees should have left the vendor with about 80,000 employees. That would mean a further 7 percent reduction could affect around 5,000 employees. After the reduction, the global workforce should be around 75,000 people. That would also mean around 9,250 would be laid off so far this year at Cisco.
SAP: 10,000 Layoffs
Software developer SAP in July said it plans to lay off between 9,000 and 10,000 workers, up from the 8,000 positions the company originally said would be affected by job buyouts and position changes. The company unveiled the news during its earnings call with industry analysts for its fiscal 2024 second quarter results, which included 10 percent total revenue growth to 8.29 billion euros, or just under U.S. $9 billion.
“Despite the volatile environment in the software industry, our growth momentum remained strong in Q2,” SAP CEO Christian Klein said during the earnings call on Monday, according to a call transcript on the Seeking Alpha website. “In Q2 we also significantly increased our profitability. We continued to execute on our transformation program with great discipline with rehiring only for the skill sets we need.”
SAP announced the Ambition 2025 restructuring plan in January to increase its focus on strategic growth areas – including business AI – and transform its operations to better “capture organizational synergies and AI-driven efficiencies and to prepare the company for highly scalable future revenue growth,” the company said at the time.
The majority of SAP’s layoffs are covered by voluntary leave and internal re-training programs and the company expects to finish 2024 with about the same number of employees, more than 105,000, as it began the year with. As of June 30, the company had 105,380 employees.
Intel: More Than 15,000 Layoffs
Semiconductor giant Intel in early August said it would lay off more than 15 percent of its workforce as part of a plan aimed at reducing costs by over $10 billion in its fiscal 2025. That plan includes the elimination of roughly 15,000 jobs, large cuts in operating and capital expenses, and suspension of the company’s dividend starting in the fourth quarter.
The majority of these cuts will be completed by the end of this year, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger wrote in an open letter to Intel employees posted on the company website.
“This is painful news for me to share. I know it will be even more difficult for you to read. This is an incredibly hard day for Intel as we are making some of the most consequential changes in our company’s history,” Gelsinger wrote.
Gelsinger wrote that Intel has to align its cost structure with its new operating model and fundamentally change how it operates.
“Our revenues have not grown as expected – and we’ve yet to fully benefit from powerful trends, like AI,” he wrote. “Our costs are too high, our margins are too low. We need bolder actions to address both – particularly given our financial results and outlook for the second half of 2024, which is tougher than previously expected. These decisions have challenged me to my core, and this is the hardest thing I’ve done in my career.”
Other Tech Layoffs
As the IT industry continues its search for ways to optimize its operations, respond to changing market conditions, or re-adjust its priorities after the COVID-19 pandemic tech spending boom, layoffs have become an important tool. This has resulted in layoffs at IT vendors large and small, some of which are significant but for which the actual number of impacted employees is not available publicly.
This includes:
