Security firm Symantec to lay off security group

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Nicholas Carlson

04/07/08 10:20AM

Filed to: Enrique Salem

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A Symantec employee tells us that on April 18, management will cut most of the company's engineers in Durham, North Carolina and over a third of its Mountain View workforce. "This is not unexpected," our tipster tells us. "Since the merger of Veritas and Symantec there has been a layoff each spring and fall." Employees have, however, confronted management to ask why a software security firm would lay of security developers first.

At an all hands meeting last week [Symantec COO] Enrique Salem tap-danced around the question from an employee dealing with "If Symatnec claims to be a security company why are we laying off the folks that do security, authentication and authorization, for Netbackup, and other Veritas products?"

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hackajar Nicholas Carlson 04/09/08 06:07PM

This was the software security team, not the Information Security team FWIW. He did not dodge question, the guy did not speak up loud enough for him to hear the question. I do not think they hire Racists their, so "anyone with a pulse" might be an overstatement.

matto Nicholas Carlson 04/07/08 11:30AM

Sounds like this is a cleanup of redundant positions left over from the Veritas aquisition, from the quoted question. I doubt that it came as a surprise for the infosec staff that came over; it would seem obvious to me were I in their shoes.

However, I would not be surprised to hear that Symantec is cutting more than ex-Veritas infosec people, since they seemed to be hiring anyone with a pulse as "Senior Intrusion Detection Analysts".

matto Nicholas Carlson 04/22/08 11:55PM

@hackajar: Your grammar, sir, is always impeccable.

QADude Nicholas Carlson 04/07/08 10:52AM

Wake up and smell the irony, indeed. Talk about stupid, too.