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Dell lays off 12,500 people
- ysofunny 2y agokudos for giving out an actual number of humans fired. instead of the usual, de-humanizing percent of employees usually given
- taf2 2y agoI kind of wish they did both... percentages are more helpful in understanding the impact (in this case to the company). But you're right in the case of layoffs a count is more meaningful... although i'd argue whether it's 1 or more the impact to the individual is the same and usually very negative.
- denotes 2y agoNote that these are layoffs not firings. The fault is with the employer, not the employee, and exit packages generally reflect this.
- scblock 2y agoA semantic difference only. They were "made redundant", "let go", "laid off", "fired", "terminated", and any other set of convenient choices.
- AceyMan 2y agoNot so. Being included in a RIF (reduction in force) is legally different than getting fired. Ask anyone who knows anything about corporate HR.
- xnx 2y agoI'm not finding any legal difference in the US. What difference do you know of?
- dgfitz 2y agoIf you're fired with cause, no severance, else, severance. It is quite common knowledge.
- datavirtue 2y agoUnemployment insurance.
- dgfitz 2y agoThe first 3 give severance, the last two do not. There is an enormous difference.
- SkyPuncher 2y agoIt largely doesn’t matter to most people. It’s a gap. When an employer has a choice, they almost always take the gapless candidate.
- MarkusQ 2y agoPercentages may be "de-humanizing" but they are much better for understanding the relevance and severity of layoffs. If your local bakery lets 20 people go it's much more likely to be a sign of significant issues with the business than if Apple lays off twenty people (which wouldn't even be news). In fact, when reading news stories you should _always_ look for the denominator (and be on guard when it isn't provided), lest you be mislead by emotionally framed numbers floating in the void.
- nolok 2y agoDepends on who they're talking to. For press release or to investors, the percent is the number that matters. To the internal communication to the employee losing their jobs or those that have to keep the torch going, the number is usually better. With that said, seems like it's part of a larger downsizing plan: "That number has been guesstimated at around ten percent of the workforce – about 12,500 people – as part of an effort to get the overall workforce from 120,000 to below 100,000."
- myth_drannon 2y agoAt least they didn't label the laid off employees as low performers like Intuit did.
- triceratops 2y agoHow is a count more "humanizing" than a percentage? They're both numbers.
- amy-petrik-214 2y agoI agree. 10 is 10% of 100, 1,000,000 is 10% of 10,000,000. They're mathematically equivalent. Why do I care if it's 10 people, or 10,000,000 people, or if it's just quoted as 10%? These are all abstract numbers, numbers are not matters of humanity.
- muwtyhg 2y agoThe article says this is an estimate based on an "about 10%" figure: > Implied was that they would be doing this without the help of an undisclosed number of newly former employees. That number has been guesstimated at around ten percent of the workforce – about 12,500 people – as part of an effort to get the overall workforce from 120,000 to below 100,000.
- bratao 2y agoFeels like we are about to get a new wave of large layoffs. Things like Intel last week and Berkshire Hathaway sells off... Brace for impact!
- nateglims 2y agoDell is directly downstream of Intel. Generations of servers typically match the cadence of a CPU generation.
- subsubzero 2y agohey the economy is doing great, what you are feeling is a "vibecession". Don't look at the hundreds of thousands of tech employees fired in the past 2 years.
- Analemma_ 2y agoTech hired way more than any other sector during the pandemic, and is now reverting to the mean. It sucks for us but means little about the broader economy.
- kingTug 2y agoI've been hearing this for the last 2 years. How many more layoffs until we touch the baseline?
- rsanek 2y agoif you look at the data, big tech employment grew a ton 2019-2022 and has been flat since. the layoffs are just a way to clean house while remaining roughly the same size.
- subsubzero 2y agoexcept I know so many out of work that are not in tech. Finance is getting destroyed right now, also media, learning and pharma. Govt jobs and travel jobs lost during covid seem like the only thing thats out there. The economy is absolute garbage right now and the media has been gaslighting everyone saying its all in our heads.
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- mrweasel 2y agoIt's really interesting how different the job market is across countries. Unemployment in Denmark is still really low (2.9% [1]) of the top of my head I can't think of a single industry that isn't still hiring, except there's no one to hire. I'd really like to know why there's such a huge different between e.g. the US, UK and Denmark. It may have to do with declining population in Denmark. Or maybe US companies over-hired, because they could, but those people would have had to go somewhere else. [1] https://www.dst.dk/da/Statistik/emner/arbejde-og-indkomst/beskaeftigelse-og-arbejdsloeshed/arbejdsloese https://www.dst.dk/da/Statistik/emner/arbejde-og-indkomst/be...
- mylastattempt 2y agoLayoffs lead to payoffs. Sorry for those of us who are not within a position of power and are affected by this. It's just another part of the neverending parabolic cycle..
- minimaxir 2y agoDell stock is currently down 3.68% today and has had no movement from the layoff announcement.
- warkdarrior 2y agoClearly they need to lay off more employees.
- dv_dt 2y agoI think it has been a short term financial bump, but long view investors are starting to see it as an indicator of future long term unhealthy performance. Either from self inflicted damage, or coming to terms with anticipated performance shortfalls.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- thebeardisred 2y agoWow, this feels like a middle finger on the way out the door: > Severance for most will likely involve a payout of two months wages plus a week per year served up to a max of 26 weeks A week per year of service?
- wawayanda 2y agoFair or not, a week per year is an extremely common formula for calculating severance at a large company
- alkonaut 2y agoThis varies a lot between cultures and jurisdictions obviously. But not even half of Dells emplyees are in the US, so presumably a large chunk of these layoffs will be elsewhere.
- gruez 2y agoThat's on top of "two months wages" base, which is already pretty generous. I'm not sure what you're expecting here? 2 months base + 1 month per year?
- jatins 2y agodon't think 2 months is generous
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- gruez 2y agoWhat's your baseline and where are you getting it? At least compared to the statutorily mandated amount of 0 days, and what companies typically give out (eg. 1-2 months), it's pretty good.
- FireBeyond 2y ago
- nolok 2y agoI assume most of these are salesmen and support people ? It says they have 120k people on staff, but do they have a clearer picture on the various divisions inside ?
- dauertewigkeit 2y agoUS corporations have become so large, they have started to function internally not unlike the fully fledged managed economies of the USSR. A bunch of MBAs acting as petty dictators hiring and firing at will, driven by nothing more than a few financial indicators and their intuition, i.e. they are making it up as they go, just like Stalin and Mao were doing back then.
- resource_waste 2y agoThis is one of those moments people tell you 'not to feed the trolls', but if you ignore them, they have a platform to spew nonsense. Reddit is far worse than HN, and no one has time to correct all the anarchist teens.
- nolok 2y agoTo support your point, this is quite literally a part of a move to decrease them from 120k to 100k employees. Who decided those arbitrary numbers, and that 100k (not 105, not 95) was the goal needed for the best interest of the company, while not even linking it to specific division within it ? Clearly not someone in touch with the day to day and nitty gritty. Not because that number is good (or not), I don't know Dell enough for that. but because that number is too round, too perfect, to be anything else than a spreadsheet result, though displayed in a "Business Intelligence" suite of course. I'm sure the guy even had a great tie. I understand it makes sense financially and that once companies become that big they are essentially playing two game (what they do game, with the workers, and what they're worth game, with the investors), but this really doesn't help with the dissociation more and more people are feeling between the stock market / modern management of companies by mba on one side, and their "real" every day live on the other. I'm very lucky to be well off enough to not have to worry about things like that anymore, but I can't imagine the rage you must feel when fired not because you made a mistake, or are bad, or your project failed, or your division is doing poorly, or your company is, but because someone decided the employee ticker must reach that number, and now if it's not done the market will decide it's a failure, so you won the inverse lottery.
- gruez 2y ago
- ChrisArchitect 2y ago[dupe] Actual article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-05/dell-layoffs-hit-sales-team-with-new-unit-focused-on-ai https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-05/dell-layo... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41166865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41166865)
- esel2k 2y agoWhy do recent layoff often need to attach something with AI? Few companies have even found a solid revenue model or recurring paying customers. I can only guess but saying layoff because of AI sounds better than « layoff » (because of mismanagement)?
- mensetmanusman 2y agoChina’s collapsing economy (30% of the world gdp) is also having an impact.
- rwmj 2y agoEven if (as you should) you dispute their exact growth figures, China's economy is not collapsing.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoIt’s collapsing relative to the assumptions people made about growth. FDIC is down nearly 10x.
- cheschire 2y agoYeah, it probably is an attempt to hide the blood in the water. They tell their competitors they aren't weak, they've just found a way to be more efficient through the use of AI. And sure maybe a couple hundred folks were replaced by some streamlined AI tooling but this is a ridiculous amount of folks to replace with AI, if it were true. So yeah, AI. Inflation. Overhiring during the pandemic. Supply chain issues. All the usual excuses to never admit mismanagement.
- bfrog 2y agoNothing like getting the boot to help fund the next yacht
- matt3210 2y agoThis is all about stock price and sucks to be dell since the price is still falling at this point.
- Giorgi 2y agoThis gotta be some sort of world record numbers. 3-4 Large factories amount of people.
- datavirtue 2y agoVesting schedules are a damn joke these days. Who stays at a company for five-plus years? People would, but they get run off by extreme boredom, garbage managers and layoffs. I don't consider anything that requires vesting a positive.
- gruez 2y agohttps://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t04.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t04.htm The quits rate in May 2024 is 2.1%. If we assume quits are uniformly distributed, then the probability of staying in one job for greater than 5 years is 28.0%. That means 5 years is above-average tenure, but nowhere near enough to justify a statement like "Who stays at a company for five-plus years?". Not everyone is a serial job hopper that changes jobs every year.
- stranded22 2y agoSo the return to office mandate to decrease staff numbers weren’t enough and avoiding severance pay wasn’t enough then?
- stockmktgal 2y ago[dead]
- babra4151 2y ago[dead]