The biggest global tech layoffs in 2020 so far

The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic has had a big impact on tech workers in the US and around the world. Because of lockdowns and other restrictions, many employees in 2020 were laid off despite moves by the US government such as the Payroll Protection Program which helped many small and midsize businesses, and a few enterprises, continue payroll for a limited time. However, in the end, the unemployment rate in the US reached the near-record level of 14.7 percent in April, but has since slowly retreated to 8.4 percent as of early this month.

Tech workers, however, were for the most part spared the worst effects of the pandemic as employers learned how to help most if not all of their employees get set up to work from home. That said, tech workers were not immune to the increased unemployment from the pandemic, as some IT companies had to close certain projects or change how they sold or supported products and services.

CRN USA in the following pages looks at the 10 biggest tech layoffs of 2020 so far. The difficulty with such a list is that the word “biggest” can mean many things. It may be based on the absolute number of people laid off, or the number of employees laid off relative to the total company headcount. Or it may be the biggest impact overall to the company. And to complicate things, relatively few company actually admitted the actual number tech employees laid off.

For this list, CRN is looking at some the biggest tech layoffs based on the overall impact of those layoffs.

EDITORS NOTE: Some entries from the original CRN USA story were omitted as they were only US-based companies.

Sophos

Sophos in June restructured, cutting its workforce by up to 16 percent and closing some offices just three months after being acquired by private equity firm Thoma Bravo, according to media reports at the time. Sophos confirmed the restructuring to CRN, but did not respond to questions about how many workers were impacted and in what job functions or geographies.

The UK-based platform security vendor, which employed 3,400 people throughout 51 offices according to its 2019 annual report, implemented the cuts in part as a response to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. The job cuts are impacting staff across multiple divisions and geographies, though the United Kingdom was likely the worst-hit area. About 100 employees, primarily from its sales engineering division, were part of the layoffs.

Hitachi Vantara 

Global analytics, IoT and storage technology developer Hitachi Vantara in February confirmed reports that it was laying off some of its 12,000 employees. While media reports indicated the layoffs could impact up to 1,500 Hitachi Vantara employees across the board, Hitachi Vantara told CRN USA the actual number was much lower.

The Hitachi Vantara layoffs were related in part to the company’s recent-at-the-time integration with Hitachi Consulting and its January 2020 acquisition of intelligent data management technology developer Waterline Data. Combined, the two were part of a move to transform Hitachi Vantara into a new kind of digital infrastructure and solutions company.

“We remain committed to the success of both our infrastructure and digital solutions businesses, however, like many of our industry peers, we have had to make some tough decisions to simplify and streamline our operations, improve our financial performance and position ourselves for long-term success – this includes headcount reductions to optimize our organization,” a Hitachi Vantara spokesperson told CRN USA via email.

Datto

Datto in May started laying off an unspecified number of employees, a move some of its MSP partners attributed to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. The provider of automation, networking, and storage technology to the MSP market confirmed the layoffs but declined to provide information on how many of its personnel were affected. The privately held company at the time had more than 1,700 employees, according to corporate website.

While Datto declined to discuss specifics about the layoffs, Datto CEO Tim Weller, in a statement emailed to CRN USA, said as the economic consequences of the pandemic becomes more clear, the company made the “difficult decision” to reduce its headcount.

“Our hiring over the past six months anticipated a much higher rate of growth in 2020 than the MSP industry or Datto are now likely to see. Our actions mean rolling back our global team size to where it was six months ago,” Weller said.

ConnectWise

ConnectWise in early July carried out “large-scale” layoffs as part of what CEO Jason Magee called in a letter to employees a “tough decision” to make the IT service management platform healthier for the long term, according to the company and two sources.

“This decision was hard, but purposeful,” Magee said. “It allows us to remain healthy and puts us back on track to execute against our plan, so we can continue to invest in strategic areas that will move the company forward: making our products more secure, creating a unified platform, transforming partner experience, and helping our partners achieve their vision of success.”

Sources told CRN USA that the layoffs at the  business automation software provider were “large scale,” amounting to about 4 percent of the company’s entire workforce, ConnectWise later confirmed. Many of those laid off seem to have been from the ConnectWise Automate platform.

“We had a plan in place for 2020 for our business, that allowed us to align and invest for the future. Like many others, as a result of COVID-19 and the continued global economic uncertainty, we experienced a disruption in our ability to execute on those plans and needed to make the tough decision to pivot on our approach,” Magee said.

In his letter, Magee said, “The cuts were tactically made across the company, and ConnectWise is in a healthier position to better invest resources where partners need us most. It ensures we can continue to be resilient and flexible to ongoing change and need, better enabling both our partners and ConnectWise to persevere together in our combined future.”

Cognizant

Cognizant in May confirmed that it is in the process of slashing its employee base as the company faces a business slowdown caused by the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic and the continuing impact from the Maze ransomware attacks on its clients. The solution provider, No. 6 on CRN’s 2020 Solution Provider 500 list, is asked about 400 executives from the director to the senior vice president level to leave the company, and offered a severance package of three months‘ salary plus one week of salary for every year of employment, the Times of India reported. At the same time, ETtech.com reported that it had received an internal memo sent to U.S.-based Cognizant employees offering a voluntary separation package to employees who currently do not have active projects due to a slowdown caused by the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

Cognizant later confirmed with CRN USA via email that the company was looking to reduce its employee base, which at the time was about 290,000 employees worldwide, but did not address the total number of reported planned executive layoffs or how many employees it hopes will take the voluntary separation packages.

NetApp

Storage vendor NetApp in August started implementing plans to lay off about 5.5 percent of its workforce because of both the impact of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic as well as a push by the storage vendor to focus on its core storage and cloud capabilities. While NetApp confirmed that it is “realigning resources and investments to best capture these opportunities and position the company for long-term success,” the company did not confirm the 5.5-percent figure. According to NetApp’s most recent filing, the company had 10,800 employees as of April 24.

Multiple channel partner and other sources close to NetApp‘s channel business told CRN that several channel-facing NetApp personnel lose their jobs, and that many of those laid off appear to be closer to the company’s technical marketing business. Those sources also told CRN USA about significant closures in the Boulder, Colorado area where NetApp has had a large presence since its early-2016 acquisition of all-flash storage technology developer SolidFire, which was headquartered in the city. NetApp CEO George Kurian later that month confirmed there was a change in his company’s strategic alignment and focus.

The cuts come as NetApp that month reported its first fiscal quarter 2021 financials in which the company saw growth in its business for the first time in several quarters as it shifted its focus away from its legacy storage equipment towards a focus on seamless data management and data movement between on-premises and multi-cloud infrastructure.

Deloitte

Sources in May told CRN USA that London, England-based consulting giant Deloitte was cutting 5 percent of its U.S. workforce amid a slowdown in business caused by the national shutdown in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The cuts were announced in all-staff calls by the CEOs of the firm’s various divisions. Deloitte’s total US headcount was over 106,000 people in over 100 cities, which suggested the layoffs could impact about 5,300 employees. Bloomberg reported at the time that the cuts could translate to about 2,500 layoffs within the company’s consulting division alone.

Deloitte did not confirm the numbers, but a company spokesperson at the time confirmed the company was aligning its resources with its clients‘ evolving needs, and that it would do what it could to minimize the impact on its people “in this unprecedented environment.”

That was followed in June by a move to cut 7 percent of its workforce in Australia due to the coronavirus pandemic. The move came months after the company attempted to avert layoffs in the country by instituting an 8 percent short-term pay cut for most of its employees and changing its annual leave policy.

Accenture

Published reports said that Accenture was cutting as many as 25,000 jobs around the world as it seeks to pare down its nearly half-a-million strong workforce. They followed the July move by the Dublin, Ireland-based global solution provider to cut 900 employees in the UK.

The new round of cuts started early August, and are targeted at the bottom 5 percent of its workforce according to performance, the Australian Financial Review reported at the time.

In June, during the company’s third fiscal quarter 2020 financials, Accenture CEO Julie Sweet responded to an analyst’s question about job losses by saying, “As I’ve said before, we’ve identified some real areas of efficiencies and so that has obviously headcount implications to it, which may be what you’re calling layoffs.”