I can't believe that came from your mouth!
Symantec to Fire Ten Percent
One in ten Symantec employees will don their yellow suits and go stand in the unemployment line, according to F*ckedcompany. And one whole facility in Newport News, VA is going away.
From the Daily Press here:
Symantec to close and lay off 130
NEWPORT NEWS — Software company Symantec laid off of a large number of highly-skilled information technology workers Thursday and will close its offices in Newport News by mid-July as part of a major corporate cutback.
Symantec, which has 130 workers in Oyster Point, established a Newport News branch in 2001.
The company received millions of dollars of state and local incentives to construct a new $22 million, 100,000 square foot building that it claimed would eventually house 300 new employees. The state gave Symantec a $1.2 million grant and the city donated land valued at $1.87 million to attract the company.
Symantec announced in January, when its first quarter earnings came in lower than the year before, that it would cut $200 million of costs. The anti-virus software maker said it would cut back on contractors and consultants, and then slash jobs and consolidate facilities.
I guess when you buy a company that owes a BILLION dollars in back taxes these things happen.
I feel a little sorry for Hampton Roads too. The region down there has big ambitions to be a major player in the high tech industry. They practically beg large companies to setup shop there with huge incentives. Gateway computers built an enormous facility there back before everyone realized they made crappy computers, and now that building sits empty. Now Symantec is pulling up stakes. Do you think the state and city will get their money back?
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| Print article | This entry was posted by Dr. Jones on March 16, 2007 at 3:24 pm, and is filed under Cyber, Virginia, You're Fired!. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
about 5 years ago
The Hampton Roads office was an artifact from an acquisition that never paid off for Symantec. I believe they specialized in mail filtering software. Symantec gave them years to get their act together and start making some money for the company, and built them a beautiful new headquarters to boot. To many people in and outside of the company, the closing is long overdue. So it’s really not the impatient act of a company that wants results *now*.
Symantec is in crisis now because its leadership squandered a considerable lead over the competition through years of stupid acquisitions (Axent was another winner) and endless political infighting. The current leadership has no clue what to do, and the “merger” with Veritas has turned out to be exactly the disaster everyone predicted it would be. Also, Symantec is sending many jobs to India (that Veritas had significant operations in India was a key, if unpublicized, reason for the merger). So they may be laid off in the US, but I’ll bet many of those positions are being recreated in India.