Nvidia to Chop 6.5 Percent of its Work Force

By Aaron Heibert
published

Layoffs are pretty much a given among large corporate entities these days, some for good reasons and others are a little suspect. The newest contributor in the layoff market is Nvidia – coming in at a 6.5 percent chop.

Roughly 360 people worldwide will be shown the door by the end of this October. Nvidia has commented that the layoffs will allow them to continue to invest in strategic growth movements. Developments such as Computer Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) parallel computing technology and Tegra mobile single-chip computer.

"Our action today is difficult, but necessary considering current business realities. Despite our reduction, we will continue to invest in selective high-growth opportunities like our revolutionary CUDA parallel computing technology and our Tegra mobile single-chip computer," said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of Nvidia. "We are taking fast action to enhance our competitive position and restore our financial performance. All of us at Nvidia are determined to emerge from these challenges an even stronger company."

The movement will also help Nvidia to become more competitive and add a bit of spice to its financial performance. Nvidia will take a US$7 million to US$10 million charge in the third quarter of fiscal 2009 to cover severances and other costs related to this reduction.

For the record these lay-offs surfaced about one month after Nvidia took a US$196 million kick in the pants in its second quarter to cover the cost of replacing bad chips used in Hewlet-Packard and Dell notebooks. Nvidia has not indicated that these current layoffs are related in any way to the recent financial loss.

Aaron Heibert
6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • crockdaddy
    Who is NVIDIA anyway? Didn't they used to make fantastic high performance GPU's? (as I order my ATI 4850)
    Reply
  • gm0n3y
    Why do companies give press releases for moves like this? All it does is make employees worry about their job security. Why not just identify where you want the job cuts and tell the middle managers to decide who's got to go? Then its not such a big deal and it doesn't trash morale as badly.
    Reply
  • kittle
    it does make people worry about job security.
    but it also stops the rumor mill when a large number of NVIDIA employees are shown the door and some press person gets wind of it.

    To me it sounds like they are "trimming the fat" - getting rid of people who dont contribute as much as they are supposed to.
    Reply
  • antilycus
    As soon as the executives get canned or MASSIVE paycuts for not doing their job, then this will be news. Until then, the poor are just getting screwed by the rich.
    Reply
  • antilycus
    Why do companies give press releases for moves like this? All it does is make employees worry about their job security. Why not just identify where you want the job cuts and tell the middle managers to decide who's got to go? Then its not such a big deal and it doesn't trash morale as badly.
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    Its simple why they do this. FEAR. The executives want the peons to make more money for the company, without actually having to figure out who should get fired and yadayadayada. If eveyrone is afraid of losing their job, they are more likely to be productive. Unless they are like me, where I think people (regardless of their POINTLESS job title) should be held responsible for their faults/mistakes.
    Reply
  • giovanni86
    This is just another sign of the economy tumbling down. The move was a financial move. Its like a rock falling in a pond, it has a ripple effect, we will all be effected sooner then later.
    Reply