Symantec axing as many as 1,700 jobs, says report

Symantec could let go of as many as 1,700 employees starting as soon as today, according to a report.

The security solutions provider is cutting roughly 8 percent of its global work force in two phases, with about 1,000 positions going first, this month, and another 700 people receiving pink slips in July, AllThingsD reported Thursday, citing unnamed sources.

The layoffs shouldn't come as much of a surprise, as Symantec first talked about the reorganization strategy in January amid its fiscal third-quarter earnings announcement.

The big target here is middle management.

Symantec's most recent quarterly earnings report was actually better than expected, as CEO Steve Bennett said in May that the company's repositioning has been off to a strong start for the new fiscal year.

He also reiterated last month that Symantec is being reshaped around fewer products, for mobility and security, specifying that this would include cutting between 30 percent to 40 percent of its management positions.

A Symantec representative would neither confirm nor deny the figures reported by ATD, providing the following statement:

The number of impacted employees being reported by AllThingsD is pure speculation. As our CEO Steve Bennett publicly stated during our March earnings call, we are not solving for a number but for the tasks in accordance with our new strategy. We are still in the process of designing the organization and notifying impacted employees, so we cannot share the total number of impacted or remaining employees.

It's been a rough couple of weeks for employees in the tech industry.

The report about Symantec's layoffs follows up recent major rounds of cuts at IBM on Wednesday, as well as Zynga earlier this month and NetApp in May.

Symantec shares were up ever-so-slightly in after-hours trading as news of the layoffs spread.

The original version of this story appeared as "Symantec said to be slashing 1,000 jobs in June, 700 more in July" on ZDNet.