Symantec Axes Hundreds of US Jobs

American software giant Symantec is cutting hundreds of jobs at four different sites across the US as part of a $100 million restructuring program.

Government filings of notices made by the company in August under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act indicate that the roles of 230 Symantec employees will be terminated on October 15, 2019.  

The company's Californian headquarters at Mountain View will bear the brunt of the losses, with 152 job cuts expected. In San Francisco 18 jobs will go, and a further 24 will be axed from the company's site in Springfield, Oregon. In Culver City, Los Angeles County, 36 positions will be scrapped. Employees were notified in early August. 

The cuts will affect many different job classifications but most of the roles targeted were primarily related to tech work. According to the Employment Development Department (EDD) filings made by Symantec in California, many software engineer and software development engineer jobs are to go along with a raft of middle-management positions.

In a letter which accompanied the filings, Symantec wrote: “Layoffs are expected to be permanent," before stating, "None of the affected employees are represented by a union, and no bumping rights exist."

Symantec, which supplies 50 million people with Norton antivirus software and LifeLock identity theft protection, has over 11,000 employees globally. The US job cuts are part of a planned 7% reduction in Symantec's international workforce announced last month alongside  symantec hundreds