Some of us haven't been in the company long enough (4 years for me). I was wondering if there has been a precedence for this previously at Qualcomm. Or are we in uncharted territory? What was the maximum number of people laid off in previous headcount reductions? Was it as farcical then?
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Layoff was a common practice from Qualcomm, this will help to clean up the house and let go low performers and people who does not contribute, unfortunately this practice stops and here were are all affected...
YES there were several times in the 1990's when Qualcomm - then a company of 7,000 - 10,000 people - was forced to lay off 3,000 or 1,000 people. Don't forget that they also took about 1/3rd of the company, put them in a lifeboat, set that boat on fire, and sold that base station division to Ericsson, confiscating the stock options of those people who made CDMA possible!!
The execs are far more ruthless than smart and they do a pretty poor job of managing their boatloads of money. Paying $4B for a bluetooth company was such a brain-dead move, I could never believe it. I am so glad to be gone from that company. They have no idea how to invest wisely with the bucketloads of cash that they earn. It would be a wiser investment to just bonus everybody and build up the San Diego housing stock, since the executive ideas for new products are all bankrupt before the projects even get off the ground.
At one point during the 1990's everyone who was laid off was assigned to department 700 (the "laid off" department) on photo-ph and so you could come in the next day and list every single laid-off person at your terminal!!
I am in qcom for last 9 yr but not in qct qrnd
Saw lay offs almosy continously every month though in small number to avoid warn act n bad publicity
QCOM has always laid-off people in small batches over multiple months / QTRs to get under the warn act. QIS was hit hard in 2007/2008 over a year with people continually laid off. Cost optimized out as it were.
When was it "charted" territory?
It's very similar to 1999, except the rumors were watercooler not internet. Like 1999 where infrastructure was the whipping boy, QCT is now the whipping boy.
In 1999 the CEO lied to the employees at the all hands when asked point blank if infrastructure was for sale. Well see if SM is cut from the same cloth as RS was, because of they file form they are shipping a buyer for QCT.
Definitely not unprecedented. But, at least in my recollection, definitely not as farcical in the past. Maybe I was younger and more naive. Maybe without social media in all its various forms, the rumor mill wasn't as efficient. I watched the layoffs in 1999 happen seemingly out of the blue (http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1999/Qualcomm-To-Lay-Off-Nearly-700/id-2d7a016956e70e8a02ddce6e940d153d) Not really a layoff, but the Ericsson sale was what triggered the options lawsuit (http://articles.latimes.com/1999/may/03/business/fi-33522); the sale of the phone unit to Kyocera was a separate transaction (http://www.cnet.com/news/qualcomm-narrows-focus-sells-handset-business/). There seemed to be a few smaller layoffs in the 2000's - probably under the WARN threshold. However, since the mid 2000's until recently, the layoffs I was aware of all involved non-engineering folks (business development, product management, technical writers, IT, etc.) Engineers tended to get shuffled around different projects unless they were egregiously incompetent. I'd say things turned a corner with the 600 layoff announcement last year. Engineers (even the good ones) aren't safe anymore. In some cases the babies are getting thrown out with the bathwater. I hear a lot of "it's not the same company as it was 5/10/15 years ago". Kinda sad, really.
This situation is very similar to what happened in 1999/2000.
Lots of potential at QC with licensing revenue but bogged down with a money loosing infrastructure division (CBS).
QC eventually sold the infrastructure division to Ericsson and focused on the licensing business. Stock went wild.
15 years later, the situation is a bit different as the licensing potential is less that what it was then however it feels very much like the investors are looking at repeating the past.
PJ ?
Guess who was in charge of the phone unit ....
I heard that their was big layoff/split when qcom got rid of phone unit, Qcom screwed employees royally at that time also and there was some big lawsuit about options.
qcom is in uncharted territory.
old timers usually used to think that a job in qcom is a permanent job
200 in Y2K http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jun/30/business/fi-46307
Been here more than 10 years and this is the first time other than small (less than 10) group layoff.