Another S.F. tech company plans hundreds of layoffs
San Francisco data software company Splunk said in a securities filing it will lay off 4% of its workforce, about 325 people globally, as cuts to tech jobs across the city, country, and world continue.
The company’s President and CEO Gary Steele wrote in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing that the cuts would mostly affect employees in North America.
Steele said the company would support affected U.S. employees by offering them “severance pay, healthcare benefits, career and job placement services, the March equity vest and FY23 bonus payouts, and access and guidance to pursue other roles within Splunk.”
He said similar support would be offered to laid-off employees outside the U.S. but did not provide specifics. Steele said employees would be notified throughout the day Wednesday if their job had been cut, but did not say when their final days might be.
The California Employment Development Department said in an email it had not yet received a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification from the company, which businesses are required to send to the state and their employees when they undertake cuts of a certain size.
Companies will, at times, announce cuts but push out employees’ final days weeks into the future to ensure they comply with those rules and give them and the state the legally required notice.
Steele also said the company would be taking a harder look at what work it outsources to consultants or agencies in the future as part of its cost-cutting plans, adding “moving forward we will be more judicious about what work we outsource and what we will stop doing.”
He also said Splunk would be hiring this year, “consistent with our focus on accessing global talent in lower-cost areas.” The company’s stock jumped slightly Wednesday, breaking $100 briefly before ending trading slightly below that mark. Splunk’s fourth-quarter financial results showed total 2022 revenues of $2.67 billion, up 20% year-over-year.
The company is one of many in tech to announce layoffs recently. San Jose company PayPal said Tuesday it would cut 2,000 jobs, while NetApp and WorkDay said they would cut 8% and 3% of their workforces, respectively.
Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other marquee technology companies have this year cut tens of thousands of workers among them.