Private equity-owned Veeam has become the latest tech firm to announce layoffs, cutting 200 people late last week, Blocks and Files reported.
“We have reduced our global workforce by 200 people,” a company spokesperson confirmed. “During this transition, our priority is helping our people–both those affected by this decision and those who remain with Veeam–with the best care and support possible.
Veeam Layoffs Affect 200
Ironically, Veeam CTO Danny Allan was quoted in a Business Insider story in January 2023 admonishing tech companies for laying off staff, saying layoffs hurt the companies' brand reputations for future recruiting, deflate the morale of remaining workers and slow innovation.
"Every time I see a notice in the news that such and such technology company has cut X percentage of their workforce, I don't forget that," Allan said in the article. "So you're sending a message that also has a brand impact that you don't necessarily want to be associated with. Employees remember and people looking for jobs remember how organizations acted during the economic downturn."
The company framed the layoffs as a necessary result of the company's shifting priorities and added that it is actually accelerating hiring in other areas and expects headcount to increase by the end of 2023.
“We are a strong, profitable, fast-growing company, however from time to time we must make decisions about where we should invest and how we can drive efficiency in the way we go-to-market. These decisions are wholly based on our priorities and do not reflect the work of those impacted,” the spokesperson said. “The changes Veeam announced this week aren’t about ceasing hiring but about prioritizing and indeed accelerating hiring in other areas, namely research and development. Veeam expects total headcount to increase by the end of the year.” Post-layoffs, about 5,000 employees remain at the company, which means about 3.8% of the workforce was let go.
Veeam said in the 14 years since it was founded in 2006, the company's VMware virtual machine protection features have helped the company achieve a $1 billion annual run rate and claimed it has more than 450,000 customers worldwide. It was acquired by Insight Partners from co-founders Andrei Baronov and Ratmir Timashev for $5 billion in January 2020. IDC placed Veeam in joint first place in the data protection market with Dell in May last year, saying Veeam’s revenues were $647.17 million, 14.8% higher than in 2021.
Tech Industry Layoffs
Thousands of workers in the tech industry have been laid off in recent months as higher interest rates, inflation and recession fears have led to a pullback in advertising and consumer spending. Just last week, Accenture announced it would axe as many as 19,000 jobs. According to the Financial Times, an internal memo from consulting giant KPMG announced last month that it would cut almost 2% of its U.S. workforce as it anticipated waning client demand. And McKinsey could also slash as many as 2,000 non-consulting staff in one of its biggest rounds of layoffs ever, Bloomberg reported last month, citing unnamed sources.
In the MSP space, Atlassian, HP and Zscaler have also slashed headcount in recent months.
