Dell Has Laid Off 13,000 Employees In One Year Amid Slump

Dell Technologies’ total employee count shrank from 133,000 a year ago to 120,000 as of this month, down 9.7 percent. The tech giant is awaiting a turnaround in PC and infrastructure sales that has yet to materialize, according to its most recent earnings.

Dell Technologies carried out two massive rounds of job cuts last year that saw 13,000 people lose work at the global leader in IT server and infrastructure sales, according to regulatory filings.

Both job cuts were announced and have been previously reported. Dell provided figures for the February 2023 job cuts, which totaled about 6,000. But the firm refused repeated requests to provide a number of jobs cut when it carried out another round of layoffs in August.

Dell saw annual sales dip to $88 billion in fiscal year 2024 down from its all-time high of $101.9 billion in yearly sales in fiscal year 2022.

“Throughout Fiscal 2024, we continued to take certain measures to reduce costs, including limiting external hiring, employee reorganizations, and other actions to align our investments with our announced strategic and customer priorities,” said Dell in a recent 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. These actions resulted in a reduction in our overall headcount.”

As of Feb. 3, 2023, Dell had approximately 133,000 employees. As of Feb. 2, 2024, Dell had 120,000 employees.

“Despite these difficult decisions, we continue focused efforts to empower our employees and attract, develop, and retain talent,” Dell added in its 10-K filing on Monday.

In a statement sent to CRN, Dell said “we filed our FY24 10-K that reflects our operations for the last fiscal year and our ongoing commitment to assessing our business to ensure we’re competitive and set up to deliver the best innovation, value and service to our customers and partners.”

The Round Rock, Texas-based technology giant’s annual sales came in at $88.4 billion, off 14 percent from a year before and $13.5 billion less than its record $101.9 billion haul in 2022. The company’s fiscal year ended Feb. 2.

Its market-leading infrastructure category decreased 12 percent to $33.8 billion in a time frame that saw global enterprise customers withhold spending, even amid the much-ballyhooed generative AI boom.

“What we’re really waiting on is that large corporate, global, multinational enterprise business and its natural I think for them to be cautious given the macroeconomic, geopolitical and interest rate environment we have found ourselves in over the last several quarters,” Tyler Johnson, Dell’s senior vice president and treasurer, told analysts on its most recent earnings call. “That’s the verticals that we are really looking to come back later this year.”

Executives have been among those departing the company with former co-COO Chuck Whitten, Channel Chief Rola Dahger, global channel leader Diego Majdalani, all announcing last year that they were stepping down.

More recently, Dell’s former Channel Chief Cheryl Cook announced just last week that she is retiring in May.

On LinkedIn, Cook said she was looking forward to what comes next and is optimistic about the role that Dell’s partners are going to play in “bringing these innovations to life.”

“I am enthusiastic about the future of our industry, the game-changing emerging technologies being brought to market, and most importantly, our partner ecosystem, which will continue to play a significant role in bringing these innovations to life for our customers,” she said. “I am not going away just yet. I will be here for the next couple of months, through Dell Technologies World, and I look forward to seeing all of you there!”