Kyndryl lays off staff in search of efficiency

Kyndryl, the managed IT services provider that spun out of IBM, has announced layoffs that could affect its own internal IT services.

“We are eliminating some roles globally — a small percentage — to become more efficient and competitive,” said a Kyndryl spokesperson, without giving the exact number of employees affected due to the layoffs.

“These actions will enable us to focus our investments in areas that directly benefit our customers and position Kyndryl for profitable growth,” the spokesperson said, adding that the company was in the process of undergoing transformation to streamline and simplify its processes and systems.

Bloomberg first reported about the layoffs.

The forums of job-losses monitoring website The Layoff.com lit up with comments from anonymous users representing themselves as Kyndryl employees. They said that staff in IT asset management roles and in Kyndryl’s own CIO organization were among those who were let go.  

“We were told this morning of cuts in CIO in North America, and that we are not affected (Europe). Let’s see what happens,” a user posted in one of the threads. Other threads hinted at entire teams being fired.

Kyndryl employs 90,000 globally. It was set up to continue IBM’s legacy infrastructure management business, and to seek growth in new markets such as cybersecurity. That growth has been slow in coming, though: Its revenue continued to decline through and beyond its first full year of independence from IBM.

An earlier post on the website said that Kyndryl had already started ‘benching” people in January.

“So it seems the ‘Bench’ program has started at Kyndryl as they sort through staff and seek to layoff folks that they feel have reached an end to their usefulness,” a user posted, adding that the layoffs were a way to balance things given the company’s stock price.

These are not the first Kyndryl-related job cuts to be announced this year. In January, Kyndryl’s former parent IBM announced plans to cut 3,900 jobs, some of them in roles linked to its work with Kyndryl.

In the face of an uncertain global economy and slowing demand, technology companies picked up the pace of layoffs in 2023, after sweeping job cuts rocked the industry last year.

According to data compiled by Layoffs.fyi, the online tracker keeping tabs on job losses in the technology sector, 532 tech companies have laid off 156,242 staffers so far this year.