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Dell is laying off approximately 12,500 employees as it plans to become leaner and modernize its sales team with a shift to AI-centric work.
Senior company executives distributed memos to staff Monday detailing plans for the consolidation of its sales division, with employees predicting further cuts to other areas of the workforce.
A “Global Sales Modernization Update” was sent to staff by Bill Scannell, President of Global Sales and Customer Operations, and John Byrne, President of Sales, Global Theaters, and Dell Technologies Select.
“We are getting leaner,” wrote Scannell and Byrne. “We're streamlining layers of management and reprioritizing where we invest. We don't do this lightly as we know these changes impact people and our teams.”
Why is Dell laying off staff?
Dell has said it is going through a reorganization of its go-to-market teams as it becomes a leaner company.
“We are combining teams and prioritizing where we invest across the company,” it said in an email statement to The Register. “We continually evolve our business, so we're set up to deliver the best innovation, value and service to our customers and partners.”
According to the memo, Dell plans to centralize its sales units into one organization and create a new “AI select sales team,” aiming to capitalize on the fast-moving “world of AI.”
Dell’s senior executives are confident the changes will help modernize the company and enable its sales team to win big in the modern IT and AI market.
“The destination is going to be worth it — it's about winning and winning big!” Scannell and Byrne concluded, though caveated the transition would be a “journey” requiring the team to “adjust as we go.”
How are Dell employees reacting?
Dell employees, including those who have been laid off, appeared to confirm that management-level staff would be most badly hit by the job cuts.
"It was mostly managers, directors and VPs,” one employee stated, speaking to Business Insider. “They also hit marketing and operations. They combined organizations and also made the ratio higher for the managers… now every manager has a minimum of 15 employees."
Another added they were aware of several managers who had a long tenure that had been cut. “It just kind of shows you it doesn't matter how much effort you put into this job,” they stated. “As soon as it helps their bottom line, you're gone."
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One source also reported to Business Insider that the company felt it had “too many middle management” positions, leading to the decision to streamline the team.
With layoffs taking place this week, some employees at Dell remain uncertain about their future. In an anonymous forum post about to the job cuts, one employee described the “torture” of not knowing whether their job was safe or not, claiming their manager had “less than half a clue” about their future.
Others responded in the thread, suggesting given the scale of the layoffs that it would take time for HR to make their way around everyone affected by the cuts, predicting a drip of layoffs to come. Another poster alleged that HR was too busy to attend their redundancy call, and instead emailing their manager to break the news.
Are more layoffs on the horizon at Dell?
The worker added they expect that Dell would enact the “largest cut in history” in the coming months.
Other employees echoed this prediction, with one employee saying that the cuts would affect “just about every other organization with the exception of the AI org,” including sales, marketing, operations, and HR.
Dell has said that it will not specify the number of employees set to lose their jobs in the coming months, though members of Dell’s HR team have claimed the company aims to get its headcount down to below 100,000, leaving tens of thousands of workers vulnerable.
Since February 2023, the company has conducted multiple rounds of layoffs, with headcount dropping from around 130,000 to 120,000.
The IT giant also enacted a highly controversial return-to-office policy in February 2024, informing staff who work remotely they will be ineligible for promotions and monitoring hybrid staff on their office attendance through badge swipes and VPN monitoring.
The RTO policy has been met with staunch opposition from employees – some of whom described the mandate as “anti-women” and a form of quiet firing – with nearly half of full-time staff reportedly refusing to come into the office.
Dell’s employee net promoter score (eNPS), recorded in its annual ‘Tell Dell’ engagement survey, dropped from 62 in 2023 to 48 in 2024.
It’s safe to staff that staff are growing frustrated with the company’s push for leaner operations.
“Every six months we have layoffs," one employee said to Business Insider. "There are no opportunities to move up. I have been looking for a new job outside of Dell for nine months."
