Apple Source Confirms 50 Layoffs in Sales
A source in Apple's enterprise group confirmed the company had layoffs today. Fifty salespeople lost their jobs — even as the blogosphere collectively scoffed at the idea that layoffs were happening.
That's not a "major" layoff, as one Valleywag tipster maintained this morning. As Eric Savitz points out in Tech Trader Daily, Apple would have to file through the WARN Act if it was going to conduct major cuts. But the WARN Act does not generally apply to layoffs of fewer than 500 employees.
Perhaps the cuts felt major to workers within Apple's unloved enterprise group. Why is that division getting the business end of cutbacks? The least sexy part of Apple, selling servers and other products to corporate customers, has never gotten much attention inside or outside the company. Steve Jobs has never particularly cared about business customers — in fact, he once ridiculed them as lemmings in an '80s-era Apple ad (see clip above). Even though he's ostensibly on medical leave, the cuts in Apple's enterprise sales are a pretty good sign he still has his hand on the tiller.