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Symantec said to be slashing 1,000 jobs in June, 700 more in July

Updated: It's been a rough couple of weeks for employees in the tech industry.
Written by Rachel King, Contributor

Symantec is said to be letting go of approximately 1,700 employees starting as soon as today, according to AllThingsD.

According to the report, Symantec is cutting roughly 8 percent of its global workforce in two phases: 1,000 going first in June, with another 700 receiving pink slips in July.

The layoffs shouldn't come as much of a surprise, as the security solutions provider first talked about the reorganization strategy back in January amid its third fiscal 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.

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

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

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

We pinged Symantec for comment, and will update this post when we hear back.

Update: A Symantec spokesperson responded with 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.

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