Anyone would care to chime in with a prediction about potential Western Digital layoffs? Any chatter, news or rumors?
16 replies (most recent on top)
Could have froze hiring last year to lessen the impact of layoffs
No layoffs. No future hires.
SSD CN and MY need to get their sh-t together and actually make profit. We can brag all day about revenue, but profit is what matters. HDD Fremont needs to stop scrapping 1000's of wafers from stupid issues. That will cost jobs.
Has anyone heard about potential future changes, like layoffs or new hires?
if HDD is left with the majority or all of the $7.7B debt, anything is possible in 2024
It’s old news
@5rzy+1qkZmMTz, If you see the California WARN report, the Notice Date was November 15th, and the effective date is Jan 19th. So there's no new layoffs. Those people who got laid off in November are still getting paid until Jan 19th. They have been doing it this way since the first layoff of 2023. In other words, there's only old news here.
: @2vbi+1qkZmMTz an EVP stated in an AHM no pending cuts, and then a press article about Milpitas cuts.
@4tdm+1qkZmMTz looks like 60 Milpitas employees before January end. Perhaps it will be cuts to a layer of mgmt.
@4tdm+1qkZmMTz, paywall,
It's most likely old news. Lazy journalism.
https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2024/01/02/western-digital-layoffs-milpitas-60-workers.html
Date Jan 2 2024...
too early to predict but history favors a layoff before 2024 ends
No layoff for already split function (for now). Shared function however the fate of those BUs are uncertain. He only spoke for that BU under him.
Irving said at his last global ops all hands that there are no upcoming layoffs… we will see if he was being honest or not.
debt refinancing early in a higher interest rate world will likely be a cost impact, so hope for increasing demand or price increases in both BUs
Just from the SSD side: NAND/SSD pricing is improving. We'll make money next year. That's not saying there won't be layoffs. Kioxia merge talk will be kicked off again not long after the split done. We'll be SanDisk for a couple years and then a merger or buyout will happen in 2026.
Not sure about the HDD side.