Splunk to Lay Off Another 500 Workers

Cybersecurity and data observability firm Splunk announced Wednesday it would lay off approximately 7% of its global workforce ahead of the acquisition by Cisco.

Splunk had nearly 8,000 employees as of January 2023, according to regulatory filings, which means around 500 workers will be out of a job. The company laid off about 300 employees earlier this year.

In a letter to employees filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Splunk CEO Gary Steele said the cuts “are not a result of our agreement with Cisco.” Cisco announced in September it would acquire Splunk in an all-cash deal valued at $28 billion. The companies said the deal was expected to close by the third quarter of 2024.

Most of the laid-off employees are located in the U.S., according to a concurrent filing with the SEC, and will receive unspecified severance and healthcare packages.

Splunk will incur about $42 million in restructuring costs, with most occurring before the end of April 2024. The company declined to comment on which teams would be affected or the timing of the layoffs, according to CNBC.

Tech Industry Layoffs

LinkedIn, Cisco, MariaDB and SecureWorks all recently announced layoffs. Google also announced it would lay off hundreds of employees, delivering the news on Wednesday, September 13. Other mass layoffs recently in the Bay Area included Intel, Wish and LinkedIn.

At the beginning of September, Rapid7 announced a restructuring plan following disappointing second-quarter results, resulting in the layoffs of about 18% of the company’s workforce.

Similarly, AppSec firm Snyk laid off 128 people in April. Cloud security vendor Zscaler announced layoffs after what it called a rough fiscal second quarter. Software tools giant Atlassian laid off 5% of its workforce as it “shifted priorities.” 

Accenture announced yet another round of layoffs in Austin in early October, after axing 19,000 jobs, and Veeam laid off 3.8% of its workforce in August.

Oxford, U.K.-based platform security vendor Sophos in January laid off 10% of its staff, or 450 workers, while San Francisco-based identity security giant Okta axed 5% of its workers – or roughly 300 employees in February.

Layoffs.fyi, a website that has documented tech company layoffs since the COVID-19 pandemic began, reported that approximately 242,000 employees have been laid off thus far in 2023.