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Dell to layoff 6,650 employees as demand for PCs plummets
- 32gbsd 4y ago5% global layoffs, plummets seems like a exageration but we will see
- bluedino 4y ago37 percent decline in PC shipments in Q4, 2022 compared to the previous year.
- blitzar 4y agoDespite the significant downturn, shipping is close to the same numbers reported in 2019, before the effects of COVID. Q4 2021 was ~60% more units shipped than Q4 2019, this is a reversion to the mean.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dan1234 4y agoDell definitely seem to be suffering more than their competitors, with a 37% decline vs 28% average (though Apple will be skewing the figures somewhat with only a 2% decline). https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS50031623 https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS50031623
- robin_reala 4y agoIf you exclude Dell and Apple, the others average -27.35%. So basically Dell and Apple are the two outliers here.
- Ensorceled 4y agoDemand for PCs is plummeting, not staffing levels.
- mymythisisthis 4y agoI find the Dell website frustrating, many times I would click on a laptop ad only to find a 'temporarily out of stock', message.
- gessha 4y agoThe Dell site was so hot garbage a few years ago that I often times gave up browsing it and went to BestBuy to see what Dell offers. Last year I checked it again and I saw they made great progress. Not quite Apple-style yet but a good step forward. I hope they trim their product line a little more and start producing better hardware. I find their design the most appealing among non-Apple devices.
- eppp 4y agoPCs arent getting any better. We have pushed our replacement schedule out to at least 5 years now. Almost everything is web based and whatever isn't an ssd and a mediocre processor can do for almost anyone that isnt in engineering or development.
- doubled112 4y agoI think this has been the case for a while. Performance plateaued pretty hard in the middle range spec hardware. Power consumption is getting better though. Somebody gave me an ASUS laptop from a few years ago, probably about 2017. I wasn't expecting miracles, it was a Celeron N3350 (2016), but I wasn't expecting the i5-560 in the M4500 (2011) in the garage is about 2x as fast. Still shipped with an 5400RPM HDD as well. The low end is still as garbage as it was in the past - barely a usable system at the time of purchase.
- joxel 4y agoYeah, I bought a $150 laptop from best buy with windows on it and the latest celeron and had to return it, it was literally unusable for anything, even emptying the recycle bin. I don't know how they get away with selling that stuff.
- criley2 4y agoI actually disagree. Middle range hardware is so much better than it was 5-6 years ago. I've built two computers recently around AMD Ryzen 5600 and that chip is so impressive. It runs circles around "high end" from the 5 years ago, and does it on stock cooling and 65W peak. (ex: https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i9-7960X-vs-AMD-Ryzen-5-5600/m357952vsm1822932 https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i9-7960X-vs...) And that's not low end. That's still a $500-$700 computer depending on what we're doing about gpu. And I disagree that lowend is still garbage. I picked up a used business machine from Microcenter for $250 that had Windows, a multicore processor, 8GB ram and a SSD. I'm not quite sure what you want from an emailchecker and youtube watcher but the parents are very happy with it. Maybe that's a bad example but the bottom end feels better than ever for light use. To me the real question mark is high end. $1000 processors? $2000 graphics cards? What in the world is happening?
- Darmody 4y agoOnly if they started fixing their hardware issues...
- ashurov 4y agoi can only attest on personal experience, but yes...
- miyuru 4y agoThis.. my 5 year old dell laptop had so much issues, I though they got their shit together but the dell laptop I got this year for work had issues too. I myself moved to an apple arm laptop which is 100x better.
- Darmody 4y agoLuckily I don't have any problems with my current Dell except overheating but that's a common issue, but after seeing all the problems with the XPS 12/15, Inspiron Plus 16, etc, I don't think I'll buy anything from them again.
- nerdchum 4y agoI've had three XPS's in the past few years, one of them the mouse didn't work out the box, the second one started having fan issues after one year, and this current one just freezes randomly for no reason. It sucks because Dell used to be awesome. My dad is still using a 10 year old XPS.
- api 4y agoApple took the high end, pushing all other PC makers down market. Gamers are an exception but hard core gamers often do their own builds or go with gaming brands.
- blakblakarak 4y agoWe get issued Dells at work - I've been there five years and had to send back 4 machines for various issues ranging from persistent BSODs, intermitten freezes to GPU problems. I currently have an I7 / 64gb XPS workstation and it's noticably slower than my personal MBA M1....
- staticautomatic 4y agoThe grass isn’t much greener. I’ve gone through a number of Lenovo X1s.
- red-iron-pine 4y agoHP still sucks, too
- a2tech 4y agoI got in a shipment of 10 Dell Latitude laptops for work recently. Every. Single. One. had to be shipped back for repair due to video issues within the first week of being deployed.
- ritzaco 4y agoThis is what finally drove me to switch to mac. Had three XPSs which were all defective *on arrival* (two with defective touch pad, one with a defective display cable). After sending the third one back I bought a macbook pro and have used them ever since.
- binkHN 4y agoDoes this mean I can finally get a high end computer for a decent price? I was in the market for one shortly after the pandemic started, but decided to delay because of the ridiculous prices and shipping times.
- ddulaney 4y agoIt's better than it was at the worst of the pandemic, and the used market has cooled off a lot. At this point you're into regular market timing questions.
- everyone 4y agoIf u want a desktop pc buy one second hand, their components can often run perfectly for literally decades. But for some reason they still devalue like crazy when 2nd hand. You pay a fraction of the retail price for 2nd hand pcs. I've bought 3 gaming pcs recently for about €300 each. Just the gpu in one of them would have cost €400 new. I've built my own pcs in the past with all brand new components, but now I am planning to never buy new components again.
- binkHN 4y agoI do this often and have several second hand machines in my house. However, for the production machine that I use on a daily basis, I prefer buying it new with next day warranty service.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- JKCalhoun 4y agoI'd love to see a list PC's that make good 2nd hand machines — ones I assume that can be upgraded (graphic cards esp. of course).
- everyone 4y agoImo anything except stuff from giant pc-makers like dell who have their own weird proprietary cases and mobos and whatnot. Any normal IBM clone pc is gonna be fully moddable / upgradable. For example if u wanted to check if u could put a new bigger GPU in, the main thing is just check if the mobo has big enough pcie slot for the card (x2, x4, x8, etc.) and also check if the PSU can provide enough wattage (If theres already a big GPU in it then its probably fine, newer GPUs tend to perform better without using anymore watts) I just go on 2nd hand sites like adverts.ie (I guess in USA maybe craigslist is similar?) and search for "gaming pc". There is definitely a learning curve to choosing new components to swap in. But if u just buy a 2nd hand gaming pc that can already play games then u cant go wrong, no upgrades necessary.
- sys42590 4y agoIf you compare current laptop offers with a Core i5-1235U and Windows 10/11 Pro, you'll see that at least HP and Lenovo give you significantly more bang for the buck than Dell.
- frankbreetz 4y agoWell, Lenovo is also doing layoffs. https://wraltechwire.com/2022/12/09/blindsided-lenovo-confirms-layoffs-but-denies-report-of-10-cuts/ https://wraltechwire.com/2022/12/09/blindsided-lenovo-confir...
- sys42590 4y agoAnd HP announced it in November: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/22/hp-laying-off-4000-6000-employees-globally-over-the-next-three-years.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/22/hp-laying-off-4000-6000-empl... My main grief with Dell is that they still practice inflating catalog prices of their business SKU to allow their B2B salespeople to grant "outstanding" discounts. They aren't the only ones doing that (I'm looking e.g. at Fujitsu) but at least Lenovo and HP offer business laptops at competitive prices without having to deal with a pushy salesperson.
- hasbot 4y ago> Following a surge in PC sales during the global covid pandemic, most major computing manufacturers are now seeing a sharp drop in demand. I'd expect. Most of those PCs are still working and are powerful enough to handle typical demands for several more years. They should have predicted this.
- scrapcode 4y agoI find it hard to believe that most of the justifications that these companies are using for layoffs weren't blatantly obvious.
- xwolfi 4y agoBut are layoffs bad ? Did we expect them to be very slow following the trend up and very slow down so that they smooth the workforce, or did we want them to fullfill the demande NOW when we needed pcs during covid and... expect them not to fire now that we dont care anymore ?
- scrapcode 4y ago> But are layoffs bad ? It depends on what side of the layoff you are on and how these positions were signaled. It is what it is - I just think that these things should be considered by all employees in the future when jumps in market demand happen - especially all of these companies participating in mass layoffs. What I don't particularly like is how companies will signal that the massive rise in business is because they're such a great company and are doing so well. Then they'll turn around and shit-can thousands overnight with justification that it was an unforeseen market shift that they could've never prepared for. I loved working in the trades, but couldn't weather that frequent storm that had evolved to become the norm. I'd hate to see that become the norm in tech. Not to mention what high supply / low demand does for wages.
- cjrp 4y agoThey've increased headcount when times were good, and reduced it when that demand recedes. What would they do differently if they had a 100% accurate forecast?
- antisceptic 4y agoDell lost my confidence when their XPS 15 display couldn't display a pane of gray without flickering. I switched to a Macbook Pro and haven't looked back. For me (personally) to consider Dell again, they would have to replicate everything that Framework does and ship Linux with support. Edit: can I also add that they suck for business too? The slim form factor has NO place in business, slimming down the chassis and removing ports is an anti-pattern. I couldn't give a shit how thin my work laptop looks, my job doesn't involve taking pictures of unrealistically minimalistic office desks. With Dell you either get a dainty oversized netbook or a rugged behemoth (which is a little too rugged unless you're in telecom and roll in a van). Where's the middle ground? Nothing needed to change from the old thinkpad.
- secondcoming 4y agoDell's Precision Mobile Workstations are beasts. I have a 7750, whacked 128GB RAM into it aftermarket, and never looked back.
- antisceptic 4y agoThe thinness and lack of ports on the Precision doesn't bother you?
- gambiting 4y agoYou must be thinking of a different line of laptops - the Precision workstations are anything but thin. They are big and pretty heavy laptops with plenty of ports.
- pnutjam 4y agoXPS are the ones with no ports. The Precision and Lattitude lines usually have enough ports, and come in a variety of thin/thick models.
- gambiting 4y agoI can confirm - I have a Precision 7670 in pretty much the top spec(i7-12850HX, 128GB ram, 3080Ti) and it's an absolute beast. It blows my previous HP Z5 workstation desktop out of the water, it improved my compilation times by half. Really made my work more productive thanks to the crazy spec.
- resuresu 4y agoSomething tells me this is companies cutting BS jobs that were created to subsidize college grads. Just made up jobs and fake growth to fluff numbers and make investors happy.
- brnewd 4y agoToday's smartphones are very capable devices. I do most coding web based (code-server) on my S22 Ultra using Samsung DeX and an external monitor. My phone has more RAM than the average laptop. There just isn't any need for me to buy a new laptop or PC.
- jdlyga 4y agoI've moved away from Dell laptops due to a noticeable drop in build quality for their XPS/personal laptop line. Dells are good for businesses that can pay for support plans at scale, but I wouldn't trust it Dell for a personal machine (I've had a battery swell up, broken keyboard, broken hinge and power button, dead pixels, and a display die just from 3 laptops). But your mileage may vary.
- Krisjohn 4y agoWe can't get customers to replace equipment. Businesses appear to be intending to run everything into the ground and expect us to just keep fixing stuff forever. We're considering an emergency billing rate, when a customer has a predictable failure we've warned them about. Meanwhile, any project that requires new hardware might as well be abandoned. Dell thinks it's bad now? It's only getting worse.