Apple cuts dozens of sales roles globally as it streamlines operations

In a rare move, Apple has trimmed its sales workforce to streamline operations; the company says it is still hiring and affected employees can look for new roles internally

Apple Inc announced that it has cut dozens of jobs as part of a major reorganisation of its sales division. The company is reshaping how it approaches business, education and government clients, leading to the removal of several roles across its global sales teams, Bloomberg reported.

 

Apple notified affected staff over the past two weeks. The layoffs touched multiple parts of the sales organisation, with some teams hit harder than others. The cuts include account managers who handled large corporate, government, and education clients, as well as employees who run Apple’s briefing centres, spaces used to host institutional clients and demonstrate new products.

 

Apple confirmed that the restructuring is under way but did not share specific numbers. “To connect with even more customers, we are making some changes in our sales team that affect a small number of roles,” a spokesperson said. “We are continuing to hire and those employees can apply for new roles.”

 

The current jobs cuts follow an earlier round in Australia and New Zealand, where around 20 roles were removed.   

 

Employees get deadline to find new roles

 

Staff who lost their jobs have until January 20 to find another position within Apple. Those who do not will leave the company with a severance package. Apple has advertised several openings on its careers website and asked affected employees to apply.

 

Internally, the company says the move is meant to streamline the sales workforce and reduce overlapping responsibilities. However, some impacted employees believe the real intent is to shift more sales activity to third-party resellers, known as “the channel”, to reduce internal costs, Bloomberg reported.

 

Several long-serving staff members, including managers with 20-30 years at the company, are among those affected. One major area of reduction is the government sales team, which works with US agencies such as the Department of Defence and the Department of Justice.

 

Apple has historically avoided large-scale job cuts, with Cook calling layoffs a “last resort”. When the company does eliminate roles, it often structures them in a way that avoids triggering the worker adjustment and retraining notifications, or WARN notices required by US labour law.

 

Layoffs continue in tech industry

 

Across the wider tech industry, job cuts remain common. Amazon Inc. recently announced plans to cut more than 14,000 roles, while Meta Platforms Inc. has removed several hundred positions in its AI division.

 

Amazon announced one of its biggest waves of layoffs yet. According to a Reuters report, the company has eliminated about 30,000 corporate roles as part of an effort to reduce costs after heavy hiring during the pandemic.

 

Though Amazon employs 1.55 million people worldwide, these cuts represent around 10 per cent of its 350,000 corporate staff. This will be the company’s largest job reduction since the 27,000 layoffs made in late 2022 and early 2023.