9 ms·

ASML staffing changes could result in a net reduction of around 1700 positions

339 points by dep_b 8mo ago

dep_b 8mo ago
Apologies for the Dutch source, but I couldn’t find any source in English yet. “ ASML plans to eliminate approximately 3,000 of its 4,500 management positions in engineering. The expectation is that approximately 1,400 people will be able to move into new engineering roles.”
- dep_b 8mo ago
  Bloomberg also has a link, but doesn’t mention ASML is actually adding 1400 engineers while cutting 4500 managers: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-28/asml-plans-about-1-700-job-cuts-in-netherlands-us-as-sales-boom?embedded-checkout=true https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-28/asml-plan...
  - microtonal 8mo ago
    I (native speaker) read it as cutting 3000 of the 4500 managers (keeping 1500) of the engineering arm. Of those 3000, ~1400 will move to an engineering position (probably because they are actual engineers promoted to management) and the rest is let go. ASML wil zo’n 3000 van de 4500 banen van managers in de engineeringtak laten vervallen. De verwachting is dat ongeveer 1400 mensen een nieuwe functie als engineer kunnen gaan vervullen. „Van ongeveer 1700 mensen verwachten we afscheid te moeten nemen”, stelt financieel topman Roger Dassen in een toelichting.
- SJSque 8mo ago
  Here's an article in English on DutchNews.nl: https://www.dutchnews.nl/2026/01/after-record-year-asml-is-to-cut-1700-jobs-mainly-in-nl/ https://www.dutchnews.nl/2026/01/after-record-year-asml-is-t... See also the statement from ASML (linked to in that article): https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2026/strengthening-focus-on-engineering-and-innovation https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2026/strengtheni...
- theanonymousone 8mo ago
  Does that mean half of those managers will become engineers?
  - mcny 8mo ago
    If I were a betting person, I'd bet that's the number of engineers who were previously forced to become managers in order to get a promotion.
    - hcfman 8mo ago
      So if that is the case. The guys that stays as engineers because they valued doing the real work that now suddenly ASML values, but didn't get the promotion have been screwed for years right? Without any real chance of getting this corrected.
  - swiftcoder 8mo ago
    I've worked with a number of people who made the IC -> manager conversion because it was represented as the best way forward in their career, only to find out it made them miserable, and convert back after a few years. I think you'll find that sort of conversion back to IC is not all that uncommon.
operatingthetan 8mo ago
Are we seeing big engineering manager cuts in the US too?
- culi 8mo ago
  From the Bloomberg article > The cuts will mostly impact employees at leadership level in the Netherlands and will also affect operations in the US. The planned reductions represent about 4% of the company’s workforce.
noosphr 8mo ago
> ASML also announced a new share buyback programme of up to €12 billion, to be executed by 31 December 2028. Oh boy. This fills me with dread. I've never seen a company that starts doing buybacks not become a financialized hollow shell within a decade. Being an irreplaceable monopoly on the commanding heights of the digital economy makes this even worse.
- stingraycharles 8mo ago
  It's a signal that the finance people are becoming more important to the company, but not necessarily a bad thing; it's effectively a more (tax) efficient form of dividends, which isn't very controversial. ASML is a fairly old company (40+ years), and they have been doing share buybacks since 2006: https://www.asml.com/en/investors/why-invest-in-asml/share-buyback https://www.asml.com/en/investors/why-invest-in-asml/share-b...
  - tehmillhouse 8mo ago
    Every time I can remember that the finance people have become more important to a company, it has led to the disappearance of the internal culture geared towards excellence that got a company to that point in the first place.
    - Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
      That's what they're afraid of, and that's one of the reasons why they're doing the big management reorganization - too many managers leads to lots of overhead instead of excellence.
    - repelsteeltje 8mo ago
      I guess it's simply the externalities issue. Finance people optimize finance, which among other things results in improved efficiency. But despite best intentions to map out all incentives that matter, it always fails to consider some aspects. Focusing on short-term profits, ignoring privacy, security or pollution because it's free, lobbying for favourable legislation that hampers competitors, etc. These are things that don't show in a spreadsheet unless you're explicitly incentivized to look at them. But that's never the case because the number of KPIs is always finite while there are infinitely many aspects that could potentially be subverted.
zhouzhao 8mo ago
ASML understands what most big companies don't. If you don't reach your targets it's not the engineers fault. It's bad management ;)
- culi 8mo ago
  ASML just set revenue records and its stock is surging due to the Q4 results
  - arjie 8mo ago
    Fortunately, one can supply LinkedIn grade insights that fit any facts. For instance, try this one: ASML understands what most big companies don’t: if you hit all your targets you weren’t setting yourself tough enough targets. There we go.
  - Slartie 8mo ago
    Which is mostly the result of clever engineers that produced a machine no other company in the world can assemble, but that is absolutely crucial to businesses valued at double-digit trillions of dollars. You don't really need an army of sales managers to sell such a product. Going lean on management and more heavy on engineering is therefore a good idea if you want to keep the lead you have.
    - Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
      No, but ASML's product is so complicated that they do need a lot more than just engineers - they have 5000 suppliers apparently, coordinating that takes a lot more than clever engineers.
      - Slartie 8mo ago
        Clever engineers are usually able to pick up basic supply chain management capabilities. At least as long as it's about suppliers of things in their technical domain. For non-technical supply chain managers to pick up enough technical chops to understand the stuff they are supposed to manage the supply chain of is comparatively more difficult. Especially when fierce negotiations to push the price down are not the highest priority, but robustness of supply chains, having alternative options that technically work, and ensuring quality according to tight specs are paramount. Which is how I assume ASML supply chain management to work.
Rygian 8mo ago
> Engineers in particular have expressed their desire to focus their time on engineering, without being hampered by slow process flows [1] I wonder what correlation will exist between the set of people who end up leaving the company, and the set of people responsible for setting up those "slow process flows" in the first place. [1] https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2026/strengthening-focus-on-engineering-and-innovation https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2026/strengtheni...
- sigmoid10 8mo ago
  Probably not that much, but I expect the middle layer that actually enabled these process flows to be cut quite heavily. You need tons of people if you really want to keep eyes on these things. So there will be more free-roaming engineers by necessity.
canpan 8mo ago
Can someone explain, why this is done? I get a feeling, it's normally done when a company is in trouble or will soon? But they should have more money than ever. They say it is to focus on innovation, but if you are a smart young person in NL, would you want to work where they just fired 1700 people? And if you already work there and are a top player it is a good time to rethink? A company I know wanted to focus, instead of firing, they sold the parts of the company they felt did not fit their future vision for money.
- ygouzerh 8mo ago
  It sounds like: Layoff --> increase short term valuation --> increase value per share --> owner of shares happy during buyback. After, it's true that having a lot of middle management can slow things down. On the other side, they could have indeed created new entities, new projects, re-qualify employees,...
- xdkyx 8mo ago
  They trimmed the managerial layer. A smart young person isn't immediately affected by it and (at least to me), this signals focus on actual work and flattening of the structure of an organization.
- swiftcoder 8mo ago
  > would you want to work where they just fired 1700 people Firing 1700 managers is somewhat different than firing 1700 ICs. Whether managers will want to work there is an open question, but quite a lot of ICs will see the trimmed management layer as a good sign that they'll be free to get shit done
  - gpvos 8mo ago
    IC = individual contributor. Wikipedia translating management speak: > Individual contributor, a business role for an employee without management responsibilities
    - NoboruWataya 8mo ago
skrebbel 8mo ago
The press release (https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2026/strengthening-focus-on-engineering-and-innovation https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2026/strengtheni...) seems remarkably to the point, for CEO press release standards. I'm impressed by their ambition to fire 1700 managers(!) That's a lot of managers! I interviewed with ASML a decade and a half ago and while there was plenty to complain about (eg their tens of millions of lines of absolutely unmaintainable C code), I didn't feel at the time feel like it was a very top-heavy organization. It was very engineer-y, and I loved that about them. This press release (when taken at face value) suggests that this has changed a lot over time and they're now trying to correct it. I gotta say, if true and not code for general "cheese slicer" cost cutting, I think that this is rather ballsy. Philips (which ASML spun out of) famously never did anything of the sort and gradually cramped into an extremely management-heavy organization where most people just write reports for other people with scary few people actually moving the needle. I think it's cool that ASML has identified that they're risking becoming like Philips and trying to do something about it, even if the method seems rather crude. I think the risk is real. ASML's fast-moving culture formed in a mad multi-decade survival-crunch, but they've been a near-monopolist for a while now and that means those pressures are long gone.
- kaon_2 8mo ago
  This. Phillips and ASML share the same regional and cultural heritage. Many ASML employees will have first-hand experience of Phillips' downfall. They certainly do not want to repeat that mistake.
  - Wurdan 8mo ago
    As an engineering manager (and one who's slowly starting a job hunt) these comments don't make for comfortable reading. What we'll never know from a press release like this is whether this is a change that employees wanted, or one which senior leadership wanted. Sure there are companies where management is overly bloated or inefficient. And maybe I'm just flattering myself by thinking that my teams' lives wouldn't be any easier if I got axed. But I'd like to think that "good middle management" is not a self-contradictory notion.
BoredomIsFun 8mo ago
My semi-tin-foil speculation: The laser research facility is in US (San Diego); Europe is on the brink of a divorce from the US; there is an expectation of scaling down.
- aurareturn 8mo ago
  No. US can't make these machines. Laser facility in US would suffer too.
  - fc417fc802 8mo ago
    Doesn't currently manufacture at commercial scale is not the same as can't make. I don't know what the patent situation is but I assume there are at least a few in the way.
  - themafia 8mo ago
    > US can't make these machines. The US is pretty dynamic. So is every country. To the extent it appears not to be there is usually some entity with it's thumb on the scale.
    - aurareturn 8mo ago
      Who is going to recreate EUV machines faster ASML partnering with China or US recreating ASML machines?
      - themafia 8mo ago
        Eminent domain can apply to intellectual property. There is even plenty of US precedent for this in nearly the same circumstances. Then again their need for defensible IP is precisely why ASML would almost certainly never make the partnership you suggest.
        aurareturn 8mo ago
        Given that the author of this thread suggests that ASML and US are heading towards a divorce, why would ASML still respect IP laws?
rvz 8mo ago
ASML has achieved "AGI" internally.
maciejzj 8mo ago
Guys, is the current narrative that, due to AI, pure engineering is gone and we’re all supposed to be “managers”, or is it the other way around? I kinda lost the plot here.
- burnt-resistor 8mo ago
  Magically, spending money on datacenters and gear makes working code fantastically appear from the aether and so engineers can be paid the same as janitors. That's what the suits believe now.
  - Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
    They can believe whatever they want but the reality will hit them soon enough.
    - burnt-resistor 8mo ago
      The problem is that decision-makers/owners are often too far away from the essential operations of the value chain and instead seek confirmation based on vibes and copying what others are doing.
  - maciejzj 8mo ago
    Yeah, irony put asisde, I believe that the reality is that people who already have power will consolidate it even more. Regardless if you were an average engineer, mid-level manager, consultant, whatever, you will be thrown under the bus any day. People can make up any identity and philosophy of entrepreneur/vibe engineer/manager/hardcore engineer/guy who run away to trades/anything but it doesn't change the fact that an average Joe is economically not viable in the current setup and he can't do anything particular to turn the tides.
- Nition 8mo ago
  As I understand it, white-collar work at all levels is eliminated, as are creative pursuits (art, music, etc), and we can finally return to humanity's true calling - manual labour.
johannkrugell 8mo ago
Can't really see the details so many ads
joecool1029 8mo ago
Wonder if China will make some of them offers?
- Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
  Possibly, but there's no-compete clauses (which are hard to enforce), plus these are mostly managers, not engineers, definitely not engineers that have the deeper knowledge of the systems. But even the knowledge on its own is enough - after all, a lot of that is in published scientific papers already. ASML works because they combined everything. China can't just build a copy of their EUV machines without also having a copy of their suppliers.
  - fc417fc802 8mo ago
    > but there's no-compete clauses (which are hard to enforce) I'm pretty sure those aren't even a consideration if you relocate to a different economic superpower.
    - Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
      Nah, worst that can happen is you get arrested if you try to go back or are in a country with an extradition policy, but that's only if it's considered a criminal case (e.g. espionage instead of no-compete) or there's a warrant out, else a no-compete clause is a civil matter. And besides, while in the Netherlands people do sign no-compete clauses, in practice they're not enforceable by law. Or so I've heard.
Black616Angel 8mo ago
I was completely caught off-guard, because initially I read the headline as "ASMR of firing 1,700 people, mostly managers" which I would listen to
- ragazzina 8mo ago
  Yeah I also like the sound of people getting their lives ruined, especially when it makes a company leaner and more profitable.
ksec 8mo ago
May be the word is used somewhat differently across the world. But I assume this isn't "Firing" but actually "laid off" ? You could say it is restructuring, eliminate positions or laid off but firing to me means something very different.
- danpalmer 8mo ago
  The translation I'm reading says that it's laying off.
xbmcuser 8mo ago
Their major revenue growth potential was blocked by the US for the previous gen systems. Whereas newer gen is so expensive that its biggest customer TSMC is trying to do without. So cutting expenses and share buy backs is the way for major stock holders to decrease their positions without share prices tanking.
rawxtl 8mo ago
Why the fuck do I need to give them my email to read something??????. Don't even try posting it if all you want is to send emails to me.... Why is the first on hacker news?
danpalmer 8mo ago
Can we change "firing" to "laying off", it's a big difference to perception and legal status. Plus it's literally the title of the article as per HN guidelines.
- pseudalopex 8mo ago
  > Can we change "firing" to "laying off", it's a big difference to perception and legal status. Firing does not mean what you thought probably.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45733016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45733016
  - danpalmer 8mo ago
    As someone replied to your other comment with, this is not correct. Firing does indeed refer to termination, which is different from redundancy. It's a colloquial term rather than a legal one, but firing is to termination as laying off is to redundancy. These distinctions may mean less in countries without robust worker protections where the lines between the two might be blurred, but in a lot of the world these are quite distinct concepts.
nialv7 8mo ago
It's insane to me how the manager culture is. Somehow going from an engineer to a manager is a "promotion"? No, they are equals. Just different people doing different kinds of jobs. There should be two tracks and people should be able to choose. If engineers feel they have to become managers to grow their careers, all you are getting will just be unhappy engineers and bad managers.
- Aromasin 8mo ago
  I know it's ironic to say this about Intel, a notoriously management heavy company, but they did do the dual tracks which I always appreciated. A principal engineer was functionally on par with a senior manager, and a fellow with a VP. This meant that good engineers weren't forced into roles they weren't interested in, and why many stayed there 20+ years. The issue is, even with two tracks, there's every chance that more people end up taking the management path because it's seen as an easy way to climb the ranks. Your success can be built from your teams success, rather than your own individual contribution.
  - lelanthran 8mo ago
    > Your success [as a manager] can be built from your teams success, rather than your own individual contribution. Well, yes. That's what good managers are: a force multiplier. A bunch of rockstar devs reporting to a poor manager may never move the needle in an organisation. A bunch of below average devs reporting to a stellar manager will definitely move the needle.
- romanovcode 8mo ago
  > No, they are equals. The salary is not equal.
  - shawabawa3 8mo ago
    in many tech companies they are, an IC6 is paid the same or similar to an M6 The difference is there will probably be a lot more M7+ than IC7+ so getting to the higher ranks is easier as a manager
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DebtDeflation 8mo ago
Given that they have around 44,000 employees in total and they surely aren't firing all of their managers, it would seem they have a lot of managers. The press release indicates most of the reduction is in IT, so internal operations, not Engineering/Product or Sales/Marketing.
jedilance 8mo ago
https://archive.is/DWEFw https://archive.is/DWEFw
SilverBirch 8mo ago
This is fascinating. Whenever I heard about matrix management it always seemed a bit weird that you have essentially two organisational structures in tension with each other - the function group lead is always going to be in tension with the product managers over how their products are resourced. I guess an obvious failure mode is you end up just stripping on direction out which is what they're doing here. One thing that goes unsaid in these situations is often the decision making for how that's done is quite political.
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gpvos 8mo ago
https://archive.is/foO7l https://archive.is/foO7l
meindnoch 8mo ago
Top signal. Short everything!
gigatexal 8mo ago
Lots of true things about do-nothing managers in this thread. There are, however, managers that help teams achieve more than they would without them. People leadership and stewardship is a soft skill that’s still important so long as we have people doing the engineering. I’ve had some amazing managers that were engaged and did more than go to and from meetings. And I’ve had some that improved things vastly just by leaving the room.
_the_inflator 8mo ago
I rose from Dev to Senior Management in a 100k+ global banking enterprise. I don't want to trash anyone. Having said that, I always kept my engineering approach as opposed to being a manager in the sense that what I did became an end in itself. I was more of a renegade within corporate, and used this unique position to achieve fun and results way above everyone else. I got proof, this ain't no bragging. It was easy mode, I used the top notch devs I could hire and automated everything, build a platform, that became internally the de facto standard, which caused 600+ Mio EUR cost savings within 4 years and counting with a headcount of 8. Long story short: I was a bit Googly, knowing them a bit and having been there. Here is the gist: To this day I could never grasp what my manager collegues or their peers and directs were doing. I asked many and many times of any rank, because I wanted to learn. Most things were related to administrativ stuff like vacations permissions, performance reviews, budget "planing" - and of course meetings, meetings, meetings. 95% of what the HIPPOS with high 6figure and 7figure incomes in the room were doing could easily been done by an intern, except for the people affais. Only requirement is discipline to sometimes just sit still in a chair and jumping via Zoom from meeting to meeting every 30 minutes from 8:00/9:00 to 19:00. Monday to Thursday. All you have to do is rely on these phrases: "What are the next steps?", "I will delegate this to...", "Now start the reports please." These people were IT managers - of course no one except me had any (!) Computer Science background. Google taught me, that it is totally easy to train a computer scientist business skills, but impossible to train any non-IT person Computer Science. This holds true. So yes, I can totally relate to these news here, however I feel sorry for the people anyway. Good faith in most cases has to be used. That they do everything to appear irreplaceable and therefore cause havoc along their "career" is only the flipside of human behavior and dysfunctional settings. Take care of your craft and be proud, if you are in need.
- zipy124 8mo ago
  The class system is embedded within corporate structures. These management roles are simply a way for those higher up the class structure to extract money from the productive workers. You'll notice when nepotism happens and senior leaders kids or associates are hired it is usually in a management capacity. It's very rare to see them hired in an IC role. For example look at Jensen Huang's children at NVIDIA, and their children who have done internships....
cmiles8 8mo ago
I’m generally supportive of the tech industry’s move to rid itself of too many mangers. Most managers are no longer technical, and just create bloated middle layers that slow everyone else down. The only managers that are decent are the ones that have kept their technical skills sharp. Most others just seem to be able to say “my team will follow-up” and “my team will look into this” and are beyond useless. Few are shedding a tear at cleaning that up.
- budgefrankly 8mo ago
  > Most managers are no longer technical, and just create bloated middle layers that slow everyone else down. > The only managers that are decent are the ones that have kept their technical skills sharp. Alex Ferguson was a terrible footballer when he was managing Manchester United. Yet they won the premiership in 6 of his last 10 years in that role, and have never won it since he left. The skills that make one great at doing work on ones own aren't necessarily the skills that make a _team_ of 3, 6, 12 people all collaborate with one another, and with the other teams within the company. Good management is rare, due to the tendency to promote engineers into the role instead of hiring people specifically trained in that discipline, but when you're in a well-managed -- and hence highly focused -- team the results you can all obtain together can be impressive.
  - coolgoose 8mo ago
    But he was a footballer, some managers in it are like Alex Ferguson was baking goods, not knowing football
  - tripledry 8mo ago
    Was in a company that didn't promote engineers (never saw this happen), only hired managers externally. Resulted in a management layer clueless about the work and product. Good management is rare.
    - fancyfredbot 8mo ago
      Good management is rare partly because nobody wants to take risks and hire inexperienced management. This leads to a reluctance to promote people without previous experience into management roles. This in turn leads to a shortage of experienced managers.
piokoch 8mo ago
Well, interesting, I would say they should grow, not shrinking, giving the demand for better and better processors.
- menaerus 8mo ago
  They are optimizing their organization for throughput by cutting off the fat so they do expect to grow, it's just that they want to be ready for it, and having a loath of managers doesn't help with it. I figure this move must have something to do with the China labs potentially coming out with their own litography system.
MORPHOICES 8mo ago
[dead]
thegreatpeter 8mo ago
why aren't people outraged?
- mahrain 8mo ago
  Local news sources[1] show that the unions and works council are outraged. That's only a start. [1] Source: https://www.ed.nl/binnenland/vakbonden-woedend-na-keiharde-ingreep-bij-asml-dit-is-een-enorme-klap~a04807f1/ https://www.ed.nl/binnenland/vakbonden-woedend-na-keiharde-i...
lesser-shadow 8mo ago
[dead]
mrs6969 8mo ago
Asml was eating the Dutch It sector. They were hiring like crazy. I know shit ton of people left their company and moved the asml in last 3-4 years. Even I guessed this was coming. And yes, wondering how many of these employees will be hired by Chinese counterparts.
andy_ppp 8mo ago
If I was the EU I'd provide capital for ASML to build a 18A fab in Europe, the way the world is going we need our own capacity here...
- joe_mamba 8mo ago
  ASML doesn't build fabs, they just built one tool for the job. That's like saying you're contracting Milwaukee to build you a house.
  - andy_ppp 8mo ago
    They build the most complicated bit no? Are you saying if the price was right they couldn't do it?
mahrain 8mo ago
What’s more surprising is the fact that the seem comfortable letting go of 1700 people with knowledge of the company and processes. Dutch government stepped in last year to help facilitate a anticipated growth by fast tracking infrastructure and housing investments, as ASML is building a new campus for 20.000 employees. Then do they expect the 1700 to wait and come back in 2-3 years when the new campus is planned to be operational?
midtake 8mo ago
Absolutely based. Middle managers just get in the way. Middle management is the quintessential bullshit job. The advent of AI should be making deeper cuts in management areas than in engineering.
lgleason 8mo ago
You have a tree that is full of monkeys that you want to get out of the tree. So you shake the hell out of the tree to get rid of them. How many are left when you are done? Same number, just in different branches.
AngryData 8mo ago
My utopian ideal is that management skills are by themselves considered completely useless, and that management skills should be considered add-on skills to add onto an already useful base set of skills and experiences. There is only one kind of person that I look down upon life, its MBAs with no other qualifications. I would consider a medieval dung hauler a more skilled and important member of modern society than a modern MBA-only holder. I just don't see how anyone can get such a degree and see their skills as valuable, but they all like to build each other up off of everyone else's backs and somehow it works. Ive never had a good manager that wasn't just another worker in the trenches for a decade or more beforehand.

339 points by dep_b 8mo ago

dep_b 8mo ago

Apologies for the Dutch source, but I couldn’t find any source in English yet. “ ASML plans to eliminate approximately 3,000 of its 4,500 management positions in engineering. The expectation is that approximately 1,400 people will be able to move into new engineering roles.”

dep_b 8mo ago
Bloomberg also has a link, but doesn’t mention ASML is actually adding 1400 engineers while cutting 4500 managers: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-28/asml-plans-about-1-700-job-cuts-in-netherlands-us-as-sales-boom?embedded-checkout=true https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-28/asml-plan...
- microtonal 8mo ago
  I (native speaker) read it as cutting 3000 of the 4500 managers (keeping 1500) of the engineering arm. Of those 3000, ~1400 will move to an engineering position (probably because they are actual engineers promoted to management) and the rest is let go. ASML wil zo’n 3000 van de 4500 banen van managers in de engineeringtak laten vervallen. De verwachting is dat ongeveer 1400 mensen een nieuwe functie als engineer kunnen gaan vervullen. „Van ongeveer 1700 mensen verwachten we afscheid te moeten nemen”, stelt financieel topman Roger Dassen in een toelichting.
SJSque 8mo ago
Here's an article in English on DutchNews.nl: https://www.dutchnews.nl/2026/01/after-record-year-asml-is-to-cut-1700-jobs-mainly-in-nl/ https://www.dutchnews.nl/2026/01/after-record-year-asml-is-t... See also the statement from ASML (linked to in that article): https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2026/strengthening-focus-on-engineering-and-innovation https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2026/strengtheni...
theanonymousone 8mo ago
Does that mean half of those managers will become engineers?
- mcny 8mo ago
  If I were a betting person, I'd bet that's the number of engineers who were previously forced to become managers in order to get a promotion.
  - hcfman 8mo ago
    So if that is the case. The guys that stays as engineers because they valued doing the real work that now suddenly ASML values, but didn't get the promotion have been screwed for years right? Without any real chance of getting this corrected.
- swiftcoder 8mo ago
  I've worked with a number of people who made the IC -> manager conversion because it was represented as the best way forward in their career, only to find out it made them miserable, and convert back after a few years. I think you'll find that sort of conversion back to IC is not all that uncommon.

operatingthetan 8mo ago

Are we seeing big engineering manager cuts in the US too?

culi 8mo ago
From the Bloomberg article > The cuts will mostly impact employees at leadership level in the Netherlands and will also affect operations in the US. The planned reductions represent about 4% of the company’s workforce.

noosphr 8mo ago

> ASML also announced a new share buyback programme of up to €12 billion, to be executed by 31 December 2028. Oh boy. This fills me with dread. I've never seen a company that starts doing buybacks not become a financialized hollow shell within a decade. Being an irreplaceable monopoly on the commanding heights of the digital economy makes this even worse.

stingraycharles 8mo ago
It's a signal that the finance people are becoming more important to the company, but not necessarily a bad thing; it's effectively a more (tax) efficient form of dividends, which isn't very controversial. ASML is a fairly old company (40+ years), and they have been doing share buybacks since 2006: https://www.asml.com/en/investors/why-invest-in-asml/share-buyback https://www.asml.com/en/investors/why-invest-in-asml/share-b...
- tehmillhouse 8mo ago
  Every time I can remember that the finance people have become more important to a company, it has led to the disappearance of the internal culture geared towards excellence that got a company to that point in the first place.
  - Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
    That's what they're afraid of, and that's one of the reasons why they're doing the big management reorganization - too many managers leads to lots of overhead instead of excellence.
  - repelsteeltje 8mo ago
    I guess it's simply the externalities issue. Finance people optimize finance, which among other things results in improved efficiency. But despite best intentions to map out all incentives that matter, it always fails to consider some aspects. Focusing on short-term profits, ignoring privacy, security or pollution because it's free, lobbying for favourable legislation that hampers competitors, etc. These are things that don't show in a spreadsheet unless you're explicitly incentivized to look at them. But that's never the case because the number of KPIs is always finite while there are infinitely many aspects that could potentially be subverted.

zhouzhao 8mo ago

ASML understands what most big companies don't. If you don't reach your targets it's not the engineers fault. It's bad management ;)

culi 8mo ago
ASML just set revenue records and its stock is surging due to the Q4 results
- arjie 8mo ago
  Fortunately, one can supply LinkedIn grade insights that fit any facts. For instance, try this one: ASML understands what most big companies don’t: if you hit all your targets you weren’t setting yourself tough enough targets. There we go.
- Slartie 8mo ago
  Which is mostly the result of clever engineers that produced a machine no other company in the world can assemble, but that is absolutely crucial to businesses valued at double-digit trillions of dollars. You don't really need an army of sales managers to sell such a product. Going lean on management and more heavy on engineering is therefore a good idea if you want to keep the lead you have.
  - Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
    No, but ASML's product is so complicated that they do need a lot more than just engineers - they have 5000 suppliers apparently, coordinating that takes a lot more than clever engineers.
    - Slartie 8mo ago
      Clever engineers are usually able to pick up basic supply chain management capabilities. At least as long as it's about suppliers of things in their technical domain. For non-technical supply chain managers to pick up enough technical chops to understand the stuff they are supposed to manage the supply chain of is comparatively more difficult. Especially when fierce negotiations to push the price down are not the highest priority, but robustness of supply chains, having alternative options that technically work, and ensuring quality according to tight specs are paramount. Which is how I assume ASML supply chain management to work.

Rygian 8mo ago

> Engineers in particular have expressed their desire to focus their time on engineering, without being hampered by slow process flows [1] I wonder what correlation will exist between the set of people who end up leaving the company, and the set of people responsible for setting up those "slow process flows" in the first place. [1] https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2026/strengthening-focus-on-engineering-and-innovation https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2026/strengtheni...

sigmoid10 8mo ago
Probably not that much, but I expect the middle layer that actually enabled these process flows to be cut quite heavily. You need tons of people if you really want to keep eyes on these things. So there will be more free-roaming engineers by necessity.

canpan 8mo ago

Can someone explain, why this is done? I get a feeling, it's normally done when a company is in trouble or will soon? But they should have more money than ever. They say it is to focus on innovation, but if you are a smart young person in NL, would you want to work where they just fired 1700 people? And if you already work there and are a top player it is a good time to rethink? A company I know wanted to focus, instead of firing, they sold the parts of the company they felt did not fit their future vision for money.

ygouzerh 8mo ago
It sounds like: Layoff --> increase short term valuation --> increase value per share --> owner of shares happy during buyback. After, it's true that having a lot of middle management can slow things down. On the other side, they could have indeed created new entities, new projects, re-qualify employees,...
xdkyx 8mo ago
They trimmed the managerial layer. A smart young person isn't immediately affected by it and (at least to me), this signals focus on actual work and flattening of the structure of an organization.
swiftcoder 8mo ago
> would you want to work where they just fired 1700 people Firing 1700 managers is somewhat different than firing 1700 ICs. Whether managers will want to work there is an open question, but quite a lot of ICs will see the trimmed management layer as a good sign that they'll be free to get shit done
- gpvos 8mo ago
  IC = individual contributor. Wikipedia translating management speak: > Individual contributor, a business role for an employee without management responsibilities
  - NoboruWataya 8mo ago

skrebbel 8mo ago

The press release (https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2026/strengthening-focus-on-engineering-and-innovation https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2026/strengtheni...) seems remarkably to the point, for CEO press release standards. I'm impressed by their ambition to fire 1700 managers(!) That's a lot of managers! I interviewed with ASML a decade and a half ago and while there was plenty to complain about (eg their tens of millions of lines of absolutely unmaintainable C code), I didn't feel at the time feel like it was a very top-heavy organization. It was very engineer-y, and I loved that about them. This press release (when taken at face value) suggests that this has changed a lot over time and they're now trying to correct it. I gotta say, if true and not code for general "cheese slicer" cost cutting, I think that this is rather ballsy. Philips (which ASML spun out of) famously never did anything of the sort and gradually cramped into an extremely management-heavy organization where most people just write reports for other people with scary few people actually moving the needle. I think it's cool that ASML has identified that they're risking becoming like Philips and trying to do something about it, even if the method seems rather crude. I think the risk is real. ASML's fast-moving culture formed in a mad multi-decade survival-crunch, but they've been a near-monopolist for a while now and that means those pressures are long gone.

kaon_2 8mo ago
This. Phillips and ASML share the same regional and cultural heritage. Many ASML employees will have first-hand experience of Phillips' downfall. They certainly do not want to repeat that mistake.
- Wurdan 8mo ago
  As an engineering manager (and one who's slowly starting a job hunt) these comments don't make for comfortable reading. What we'll never know from a press release like this is whether this is a change that employees wanted, or one which senior leadership wanted. Sure there are companies where management is overly bloated or inefficient. And maybe I'm just flattering myself by thinking that my teams' lives wouldn't be any easier if I got axed. But I'd like to think that "good middle management" is not a self-contradictory notion.

BoredomIsFun 8mo ago

My semi-tin-foil speculation: The laser research facility is in US (San Diego); Europe is on the brink of a divorce from the US; there is an expectation of scaling down.

aurareturn 8mo ago
No. US can't make these machines. Laser facility in US would suffer too.
- fc417fc802 8mo ago
  Doesn't currently manufacture at commercial scale is not the same as can't make. I don't know what the patent situation is but I assume there are at least a few in the way.
- themafia 8mo ago
  > US can't make these machines. The US is pretty dynamic. So is every country. To the extent it appears not to be there is usually some entity with it's thumb on the scale.
  - aurareturn 8mo ago
    Who is going to recreate EUV machines faster ASML partnering with China or US recreating ASML machines?
    - themafia 8mo ago
      Eminent domain can apply to intellectual property. There is even plenty of US precedent for this in nearly the same circumstances. Then again their need for defensible IP is precisely why ASML would almost certainly never make the partnership you suggest.
      - aurareturn 8mo ago
        Given that the author of this thread suggests that ASML and US are heading towards a divorce, why would ASML still respect IP laws?

rvz 8mo ago

ASML has achieved "AGI" internally.

maciejzj 8mo ago

Guys, is the current narrative that, due to AI, pure engineering is gone and we’re all supposed to be “managers”, or is it the other way around? I kinda lost the plot here.

burnt-resistor 8mo ago
Magically, spending money on datacenters and gear makes working code fantastically appear from the aether and so engineers can be paid the same as janitors. That's what the suits believe now.
- Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
  They can believe whatever they want but the reality will hit them soon enough.
  - burnt-resistor 8mo ago
    The problem is that decision-makers/owners are often too far away from the essential operations of the value chain and instead seek confirmation based on vibes and copying what others are doing.
- maciejzj 8mo ago
  Yeah, irony put asisde, I believe that the reality is that people who already have power will consolidate it even more. Regardless if you were an average engineer, mid-level manager, consultant, whatever, you will be thrown under the bus any day. People can make up any identity and philosophy of entrepreneur/vibe engineer/manager/hardcore engineer/guy who run away to trades/anything but it doesn't change the fact that an average Joe is economically not viable in the current setup and he can't do anything particular to turn the tides.
Nition 8mo ago
As I understand it, white-collar work at all levels is eliminated, as are creative pursuits (art, music, etc), and we can finally return to humanity's true calling - manual labour.

johannkrugell 8mo ago

Can't really see the details so many ads

joecool1029 8mo ago

Wonder if China will make some of them offers?

Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
Possibly, but there's no-compete clauses (which are hard to enforce), plus these are mostly managers, not engineers, definitely not engineers that have the deeper knowledge of the systems. But even the knowledge on its own is enough - after all, a lot of that is in published scientific papers already. ASML works because they combined everything. China can't just build a copy of their EUV machines without also having a copy of their suppliers.
- fc417fc802 8mo ago
  > but there's no-compete clauses (which are hard to enforce) I'm pretty sure those aren't even a consideration if you relocate to a different economic superpower.
  - Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
    Nah, worst that can happen is you get arrested if you try to go back or are in a country with an extradition policy, but that's only if it's considered a criminal case (e.g. espionage instead of no-compete) or there's a warrant out, else a no-compete clause is a civil matter. And besides, while in the Netherlands people do sign no-compete clauses, in practice they're not enforceable by law. Or so I've heard.

Black616Angel 8mo ago

I was completely caught off-guard, because initially I read the headline as "ASMR of firing 1,700 people, mostly managers" which I would listen to

ragazzina 8mo ago
Yeah I also like the sound of people getting their lives ruined, especially when it makes a company leaner and more profitable.

ksec 8mo ago

May be the word is used somewhat differently across the world. But I assume this isn't "Firing" but actually "laid off" ? You could say it is restructuring, eliminate positions or laid off but firing to me means something very different.

danpalmer 8mo ago
The translation I'm reading says that it's laying off.

xbmcuser 8mo ago

Their major revenue growth potential was blocked by the US for the previous gen systems. Whereas newer gen is so expensive that its biggest customer TSMC is trying to do without. So cutting expenses and share buy backs is the way for major stock holders to decrease their positions without share prices tanking.

rawxtl 8mo ago

Why the fuck do I need to give them my email to read something??????. Don't even try posting it if all you want is to send emails to me.... Why is the first on hacker news?

danpalmer 8mo ago

Can we change "firing" to "laying off", it's a big difference to perception and legal status. Plus it's literally the title of the article as per HN guidelines.

pseudalopex 8mo ago
> Can we change "firing" to "laying off", it's a big difference to perception and legal status. Firing does not mean what you thought probably.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45733016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45733016
- danpalmer 8mo ago
  As someone replied to your other comment with, this is not correct. Firing does indeed refer to termination, which is different from redundancy. It's a colloquial term rather than a legal one, but firing is to termination as laying off is to redundancy. These distinctions may mean less in countries without robust worker protections where the lines between the two might be blurred, but in a lot of the world these are quite distinct concepts.

nialv7 8mo ago

It's insane to me how the manager culture is. Somehow going from an engineer to a manager is a "promotion"? No, they are equals. Just different people doing different kinds of jobs. There should be two tracks and people should be able to choose. If engineers feel they have to become managers to grow their careers, all you are getting will just be unhappy engineers and bad managers.

Aromasin 8mo ago
I know it's ironic to say this about Intel, a notoriously management heavy company, but they did do the dual tracks which I always appreciated. A principal engineer was functionally on par with a senior manager, and a fellow with a VP. This meant that good engineers weren't forced into roles they weren't interested in, and why many stayed there 20+ years. The issue is, even with two tracks, there's every chance that more people end up taking the management path because it's seen as an easy way to climb the ranks. Your success can be built from your teams success, rather than your own individual contribution.
- lelanthran 8mo ago
  > Your success [as a manager] can be built from your teams success, rather than your own individual contribution. Well, yes. That's what good managers are: a force multiplier. A bunch of rockstar devs reporting to a poor manager may never move the needle in an organisation. A bunch of below average devs reporting to a stellar manager will definitely move the needle.
romanovcode 8mo ago
> No, they are equals. The salary is not equal.
- shawabawa3 8mo ago
  in many tech companies they are, an IC6 is paid the same or similar to an M6 The difference is there will probably be a lot more M7+ than IC7+ so getting to the higher ranks is easier as a manager

deleted 8mo ago

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DebtDeflation 8mo ago

Given that they have around 44,000 employees in total and they surely aren't firing all of their managers, it would seem they have a lot of managers. The press release indicates most of the reduction is in IT, so internal operations, not Engineering/Product or Sales/Marketing.

jedilance 8mo ago

https://archive.is/DWEFw https://archive.is/DWEFw

SilverBirch 8mo ago

This is fascinating. Whenever I heard about matrix management it always seemed a bit weird that you have essentially two organisational structures in tension with each other - the function group lead is always going to be in tension with the product managers over how their products are resourced. I guess an obvious failure mode is you end up just stripping on direction out which is what they're doing here. One thing that goes unsaid in these situations is often the decision making for how that's done is quite political.

deleted 8mo ago

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gpvos 8mo ago

https://archive.is/foO7l https://archive.is/foO7l

meindnoch 8mo ago

Top signal. Short everything!

gigatexal 8mo ago

Lots of true things about do-nothing managers in this thread. There are, however, managers that help teams achieve more than they would without them. People leadership and stewardship is a soft skill that’s still important so long as we have people doing the engineering. I’ve had some amazing managers that were engaged and did more than go to and from meetings. And I’ve had some that improved things vastly just by leaving the room.

_the_inflator 8mo ago

I rose from Dev to Senior Management in a 100k+ global banking enterprise. I don't want to trash anyone. Having said that, I always kept my engineering approach as opposed to being a manager in the sense that what I did became an end in itself. I was more of a renegade within corporate, and used this unique position to achieve fun and results way above everyone else. I got proof, this ain't no bragging. It was easy mode, I used the top notch devs I could hire and automated everything, build a platform, that became internally the de facto standard, which caused 600+ Mio EUR cost savings within 4 years and counting with a headcount of 8. Long story short: I was a bit Googly, knowing them a bit and having been there. Here is the gist: To this day I could never grasp what my manager collegues or their peers and directs were doing. I asked many and many times of any rank, because I wanted to learn. Most things were related to administrativ stuff like vacations permissions, performance reviews, budget "planing" - and of course meetings, meetings, meetings. 95% of what the HIPPOS with high 6figure and 7figure incomes in the room were doing could easily been done by an intern, except for the people affais. Only requirement is discipline to sometimes just sit still in a chair and jumping via Zoom from meeting to meeting every 30 minutes from 8:00/9:00 to 19:00. Monday to Thursday. All you have to do is rely on these phrases: "What are the next steps?", "I will delegate this to...", "Now start the reports please." These people were IT managers - of course no one except me had any (!) Computer Science background. Google taught me, that it is totally easy to train a computer scientist business skills, but impossible to train any non-IT person Computer Science. This holds true. So yes, I can totally relate to these news here, however I feel sorry for the people anyway. Good faith in most cases has to be used. That they do everything to appear irreplaceable and therefore cause havoc along their "career" is only the flipside of human behavior and dysfunctional settings. Take care of your craft and be proud, if you are in need.

zipy124 8mo ago
The class system is embedded within corporate structures. These management roles are simply a way for those higher up the class structure to extract money from the productive workers. You'll notice when nepotism happens and senior leaders kids or associates are hired it is usually in a management capacity. It's very rare to see them hired in an IC role. For example look at Jensen Huang's children at NVIDIA, and their children who have done internships....

cmiles8 8mo ago

I’m generally supportive of the tech industry’s move to rid itself of too many mangers. Most managers are no longer technical, and just create bloated middle layers that slow everyone else down. The only managers that are decent are the ones that have kept their technical skills sharp. Most others just seem to be able to say “my team will follow-up” and “my team will look into this” and are beyond useless. Few are shedding a tear at cleaning that up.

budgefrankly 8mo ago
> Most managers are no longer technical, and just create bloated middle layers that slow everyone else down. > The only managers that are decent are the ones that have kept their technical skills sharp. Alex Ferguson was a terrible footballer when he was managing Manchester United. Yet they won the premiership in 6 of his last 10 years in that role, and have never won it since he left. The skills that make one great at doing work on ones own aren't necessarily the skills that make a _team_ of 3, 6, 12 people all collaborate with one another, and with the other teams within the company. Good management is rare, due to the tendency to promote engineers into the role instead of hiring people specifically trained in that discipline, but when you're in a well-managed -- and hence highly focused -- team the results you can all obtain together can be impressive.
- coolgoose 8mo ago
  But he was a footballer, some managers in it are like Alex Ferguson was baking goods, not knowing football
- tripledry 8mo ago
  Was in a company that didn't promote engineers (never saw this happen), only hired managers externally. Resulted in a management layer clueless about the work and product. Good management is rare.
  - fancyfredbot 8mo ago
    Good management is rare partly because nobody wants to take risks and hire inexperienced management. This leads to a reluctance to promote people without previous experience into management roles. This in turn leads to a shortage of experienced managers.

piokoch 8mo ago

Well, interesting, I would say they should grow, not shrinking, giving the demand for better and better processors.

menaerus 8mo ago
They are optimizing their organization for throughput by cutting off the fat so they do expect to grow, it's just that they want to be ready for it, and having a loath of managers doesn't help with it. I figure this move must have something to do with the China labs potentially coming out with their own litography system.

MORPHOICES 8mo ago

[dead]

thegreatpeter 8mo ago

why aren't people outraged?

mahrain 8mo ago
Local news sources[1] show that the unions and works council are outraged. That's only a start. [1] Source: https://www.ed.nl/binnenland/vakbonden-woedend-na-keiharde-ingreep-bij-asml-dit-is-een-enorme-klap~a04807f1/ https://www.ed.nl/binnenland/vakbonden-woedend-na-keiharde-i...

lesser-shadow 8mo ago

[dead]

mrs6969 8mo ago

Asml was eating the Dutch It sector. They were hiring like crazy. I know shit ton of people left their company and moved the asml in last 3-4 years. Even I guessed this was coming. And yes, wondering how many of these employees will be hired by Chinese counterparts.

andy_ppp 8mo ago

If I was the EU I'd provide capital for ASML to build a 18A fab in Europe, the way the world is going we need our own capacity here...

joe_mamba 8mo ago
ASML doesn't build fabs, they just built one tool for the job. That's like saying you're contracting Milwaukee to build you a house.
- andy_ppp 8mo ago
  They build the most complicated bit no? Are you saying if the price was right they couldn't do it?

mahrain 8mo ago

What’s more surprising is the fact that the seem comfortable letting go of 1700 people with knowledge of the company and processes. Dutch government stepped in last year to help facilitate a anticipated growth by fast tracking infrastructure and housing investments, as ASML is building a new campus for 20.000 employees. Then do they expect the 1700 to wait and come back in 2-3 years when the new campus is planned to be operational?

midtake 8mo ago

Absolutely based. Middle managers just get in the way. Middle management is the quintessential bullshit job. The advent of AI should be making deeper cuts in management areas than in engineering.

lgleason 8mo ago

You have a tree that is full of monkeys that you want to get out of the tree. So you shake the hell out of the tree to get rid of them. How many are left when you are done? Same number, just in different branches.

AngryData 8mo ago

My utopian ideal is that management skills are by themselves considered completely useless, and that management skills should be considered add-on skills to add onto an already useful base set of skills and experiences. There is only one kind of person that I look down upon life, its MBAs with no other qualifications. I would consider a medieval dung hauler a more skilled and important member of modern society than a modern MBA-only holder. I just don't see how anyone can get such a degree and see their skills as valuable, but they all like to build each other up off of everyone else's backs and somehow it works. Ive never had a good manager that wasn't just another worker in the trenches for a decade or more beforehand.