While Citrix was late to the outsourcing game (thanks to strong engineering leadership that resisted it for so long until the H-1Bs staged a coup in Fort Lauderdale and threw them out), the rest of the industry has realized outsourcing is a failure. This is why you see tech companies and organizations like FWD.us pushing so hard for increased H-1B caps and a 600% extension to the OPT program. They want the same cheap #H1B labor they can get overseas but within their own walls, where they can protect their IP better and not have to deal with annoying international labor issues. Elliott's strategy may cause a short-term increase in Citrix offshore headcount, but if the crony capitalists win in 2016, there's a good chance you will see an increase in local hiring that is dominated by visa holders.
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The 1 million dollar question is not whether there will be an increase in hires (chances are there will be - there typically are after a bloodletting.) The question is whether the company is viable in the long term (as opposed to hire the f--- away and then everything flops again 2-3 years from now.) Honestly, there are a lot of changes in virtualization - the cloud (specifically AWS) and docker are game changers. It's not just Citrix that is vulnerable. VMWare is going to get hit badly (they already had a very recent layoff.) But that's fine. The smart thing is to ride this gravy train till it goes belly up and dry !!!
The UK team is who doomed Citrix from a technology perspective. XenDesktop/VDI as a product concept can now categorically be called a flop. The arrogance on how FMA was implemented (no migration path, no upgrade possibility, no guides and assistance to customers) is what opened up Citrx's flank to attack from Vmware and others. You can survive one of these mistakes, but, the one-two punch is going to set back Citrix for a long time.
Don't believe this nonsense about the UK being at risk. The UK is XenApp and XenDesktop and Citrix should be more concerned about the UK team leaving them than the other way around. Frankly, the way the UK team has been treated, I'm surprised so many of them are still around already.
In the US the cheapest area is Fort Lauderdale. There will be expansions there and consolidations from other sites besides NC. They are already trying to bring top remaining talent to FL from CA, MA, and even a few from the UK. Big push to no longer has development teams spread across GEOs. If you are on a core product that team is all in one spot. We all saw how terrible that worked out when they decided to split to the UK.
The will hire in cheaper areas, that is for sure