The company is underperforming in Germany, its biggest market, Della Valle explains. The company has already made some cuts in its central operations, slashing 500 positions early in the year.
The Big Tech Layoffs Will Continue
We’ve tracked the mass layoffs in tech for months, and they’re still on the roll. Cutting five or six percent of the total workforce appears to be the formula that tech executives are operating with.
Other measures of austerity go hand-in-hand with layoffs. Many major tech companies are pushing for a return to the office and a rollback of remote working options.
At the same time, some corporations are cutting back on benefits: Google is ending its complimentary snacks, shuttles, and fitness classes. In other words, the boom years are over for the tech world.
Are Layoffs Really Needed?
The actual necessity of any large-scale layoffs can be hard to pin down amid a flood of thin but PR-friendly company lines.
Some experts hold that companies issuing indiscriminate layoffs aren’t helping themselves from a revenue perspective: Speaking to The Verge in January, Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Jeffrey Pfeffer said that layoffs may actually reduce the productivity needed for continued success.
“Oftentimes, companies don’t have a cost problem. They have a revenue problem. And cutting employees will not increase your revenue. It will probably decrease it.” – Jeffrey Pfeffer
We wrote last month that more than 100,000 people have lost their jobs in tech since last year. Now, that number is set to continue growing, with Vodafone’s job losses metered out over three more years.
