Any idea how many ppl will be affected by the merge?
Shall I assume that before the merge, HD organization would separate?
I work in client division but we deal with HD and SSD and Cloud Applications . Wonder where we will go.
7 replies (most recent on top)
flash business Japan centric, enterprise flash is their jam, opened new R&D buildings, difficult to release Japanese employees, so we know enterprise side redundancies will be resolved
Non-Japanese employees will be let go in large numbers. Japanese employees will be kept as letting them go costs a tremendous amount of money.
i think China MOFCOM will force a "hold separate" for several years like with HGST and WD.
WD still dreaming
My guess on why the deal is taking so long is because they wanted to combine the HDD-SSD split and merge SSD (i.e. practically SanDisk) with Kioxia. So WDC will go back to the old HDD manufacturing business with HGST etc., and the SanDisk + Kioxia will be Kioxia I guess.
Layoffs is coming for sure, so the question is should I wait to be laid off or should I start looking. If you LinkedIn job postings, you would see that the number of applicants for each jobs. 1-2 years ago, for people in my field, there were probably 10-15 applicants max. Today, each opening has 30+ applicants within a couple days of posting. Once the layoff happens, there will be more people in the market for sure. Good luck all!
Do you mean Japanese leaders or Japanese company leaders? After merge with HGST, my department people left from 90 to less than 20 now, half got cut and half felt no career future and left. And a tip, my department has most PhDs in WD.
Japanese leaders usually value employees and their contribution. I don't believe there will be any major layoffs. Expect compensation adjustment though. And forget bonus and RSUs.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/07/15/business/tech/western-digital-kioxia-merger-plans-august/