This article is in one of these threads iirc:
DST employees were hit Tuesday with massive layoffs, but the decision to fire 6% of the back-office providers’ staff should have been no surprise to those listening to the firm’s CEO speak to investors last week.
“When you look at how do you wring costs out of places, you don’t have to work very hard,” said Bill Stone, CEO of Windsor, Conn.-based SSC Technologies, on June 13 at the William Blair Growth Stock Conference, according to a replay of the presentation hosted on SSC’s website. He noted that DST had 3,500 “empty seats,” which he described as “ridiculous.”
“What are they going to do, a job fair or something? What, are they crazy?”
The CEO said in a free-flowing question and answer session that he “hated” letting people go and didn’t want to work with people who liked firing staff. But at the same time, he emphasized that executives “really are focused on numbers.”
“If we have a job and we have work to do and somebody likes the pay and we like them, well great, that’s what it’s all about,” he said. “But if we don’t have any work, then we ought not be having a bunch of hangers.”
3,500: about 1,000 between june/october this years, ~100 from attrition. 2,500 to go. Hold tight people. True they have to keep some staff. But not much according to the CEO.