Qualtrics, a web-based survey and reports tools provider, plans to lay off about 780 people across the company, with “several hundred roles” changing or moving locations over the next year.
Zig Serafin, CEO of the vendor – which has headquarters in Provo, Utah, and Seattle – said in a blog post that the layoffs are a result of “a deep review of every function in the company” and that the new Qualtrics “will enable our teams to work better together, bring new innovations to market faster, and make it easier for our customers and partners to do business with us.”
“Rapid hiring was essential to enable our growth up to this point, but it also created complexity that does not support continued growth at our scale,” Serafin said. “Simply put, the organizational structures, work processes and the way we made decisions previously don’t work for the company we’ve become, or the company we aspire to be.”
Qualtrics Layoffs
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In the blog post, Serafin added that “while these changes are important to Qualtrics’ future, they are not easy. And we are going to support teammates who are affected.”
“To those who are leaving, I am truly sorry,” he said. “I know this explanation doesn’t make it any better for you. On behalf of the entire company, thank you for everything you’ve given to Qualtrics, and for the chapters you have helped to write. We are committed to supporting you through this change.”
Qualtrics has a partner program with members including EY, Accenture, IBM, Bain & Co., UST, Cognizant and other solution provider giants. As of Jan. 25, more than 400 partners were in the Qualtrics Partner Network, according to the company.
The company had more than 5,000 employees worldwide as of Jan. 25, according to Qualtrics’ website. This would mean the layoffs affect about 15 percent of the workforce.
In June, private equity firm Silver Lake and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board – or CPP Investments – completed their acquisition of Qualtrics for about $12.5 billion, which included the purchase of SAP’s majority stake in the company.
Silver Lake portfolio companies include Dell Technologies, Stripe and VMware, according to its website.
CPP holdings include Alphabet and Nvidia. CPP private equity investments have included Epicor, Veeam, Qlik, Mimecast, McAfee, Snowflake, Anaplan, Databricks and Informatica, according to its website.
SAP had bought Qualtrics four years earlier for $8 billion and spun it out as a publicly traded company, with SAP retaining that majority stake.
Word of SAP seeking to sell its stake emerged in January, when SAP announced it would lay off up to 3,000 employees – about 2.5 percent of its global workforce.
In Qualtrics’ last public report of its finances, the company reported for full year 2022 $1.5 billion in total revenue, up 36 percent year over year. Fourth quarter revenue was $389.1 million, up 23 percent year over year.
On Qualtrics’ earnings call Jan. 25, Serafin notably said that the company continued “to strengthen our strategic partnerships and work together to solve our customers’ most pressing challenges,” according to a call transcript.
Qualtrics Chief Financial Officer Rob Bachman elaborated on the call that said that for fiscal year 2023, Qualtrics was “streamlining our go-to-market, including leveraging our partner ecosystem for both business development and services fulfillment,” according to the transcript.
The company isn’t alone in cutting its employee roster amid growing inflation, the possibility of a recession in the near future and tightening IT budgets after high demand for technology during the height of the pandemic.
BlackLine, Malwarebytes, Google, Dell Technologies and Slalom are among the tech businesses to announce or conduct layoffs in recent weeks.
Employees In Sales, DEI Cut
Multiple Qualtrics employees took to social media network LinkedIn to confirm their layoffs, with cuts hitting roles in engineering, management, sales, and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
A senior sales enablement specialist with the company for almost two years said in a LinkedIn post that last week, his wife gave birth to a son who spent time in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) due to complications.
“Despite being laid off, I am the luckiest man in the world,” he wrote. “After 5 days of paternity, it got cut short with the layoffs at Qualtrics, with no explanation other than reduction in spend & reorganization. Yet I’m LUCKY again to be back on the market and seek my next adventure!”
Others who posted on LinkedIn about getting laid off from Qualtrics include:
*A senior sales development representative for employee experience with the company for more than a year
*A level two technology specialist with the company for more than two years
*A senior vendor analyst with the company for more than a year
*A DEI program manager with the company for about a year
*A revenue operations specialist with the company for more than three years
*A principal solutions engineer for financial services with the company for more than a year
*A global program manager with a Salesforce focus with the company for more than two years
*A deal support specialist with the company for less than a year
*An information security engineer with the company for more than a year
*A product enablement consultant with the company for almost four years
*A global web marketing strategy manager with the company for almost five years
*An engineering project manager with the company for more than a year
*A commercial finance analyst with the company for more than four years