Big Job Cuts at Big Tech Companies

Katie Fehrenbacher | Wednesday, May 30, 2007 | 4:05 PM PT | 9 comments

There might be a lot of money flowing in Silicon Valley right now — four startups announced that they’ve been acquired just today. But for some of the big tech companies, and their employees, times aren’t so good.

Motorola said today its going to cut another 4,000 workers, in addition to the 3,500 the company announced in January.

Update: Now add Dell to the list of companies makig cuts. On Thursday Dell said it will lay off 8,000 workers over the next year.

Moto has been struggling as it tries to followup its success with the RAZR — and the phone maker isn’t really winning us over with the dull RAZR 2. The WSJ points out that these last two job cuts represent over 10% of the company’s work force as of the end of last year.

At the same time IBM said today that it will cut 1,570 jobs mostly in its technology services unit. That’s the company’s second set of cuts this month. Other large telco companies — Sprint, Alcatel/Lucent, Nortel, Level 3 — have been trimming large sections of staff too.

Comments (9)

  • Anyone have more info on the IBM tech group cuts? Post links, thanks!

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  • I am sure they will get absorbed very soon. There is virtually full employment in the tech industry.

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  • Has anyone heard about cuts at Apple?

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  • What about Yahoo? Rumors have been swirling around about big layoffs there for quite some time.

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  • It’s an industry that changes rapidly so no surprise there. Moreover, whenever there are a lot of job cuts, you will see people starting their own businesses. I’d guess a number of those fired from these tech companies will launch a startup.

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  • And they want more H1B Visas ????

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  • I think Motorola should quit trying to make mediocre phones, and concentrate on what they do best, which is radio infrastructure and terminals.

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  • I think USA should give out atleast 1 million H1B visas every month to Indians…that will help to reduce costs exponentially and make these companies more competitive.

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  • The problem is not h1b program. The problem is how the h1bs of Indian origin are unfairly treated by the US govt. H1bs from countries other than India can get and EAD within 6 months…. (which is almost like a green card). Whereas, it take 4.5 yrs for Indians to get an EAD.

    Yet our constitution talks about equlity…

      Reply

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