After WD recovered from the floods in Thailand, profits were high and the company dreamed of a glorious future. WD went on a giant expansion and hired many new people. Some would call it optimism at the time; others would say it was really bad planning. Anyhow, sales of hard drives suddenly began to drop in about Jan. 2015. PC's & laptops don't need hard drives as much now, since SDD is replacing hard drives at the consumer level. So WD has been laying off the mountain of people it hired during its short-but-furious expansion phase. As the hard drive market continues to shrink to zero (think floppy drive here), it's fair to guess that WD will be laying off hard drive people with regularity until, eventually, they're all gone. The Sandisk/SSD folks will likely last longer, as their technology is hot right now.
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Every 3 to 6 months guaranteed.
Layoffs at least twice a year at western digital is the norm.
WD CEO promised to the shareholders that WD-HGST merger creates $0.5B opex (operating expense) savings per year and that WD-SanDisk merger would create similar opex savings. How to realize that? Layoff.
A layoff can occur at any company at any time for any number of reasons. In the case of WD, there was a merger with HGST and the acquisition of SanDisk that resulted in a lot of overlapping functions. Also, the IT storage and data processing sector (and the IT sector in general) is going through a bust. There was a sharp drop in orders for HDDs (which is WD's core business). What we are seeing is a retrenchment with the RIF. Does it happen on a regular basis? It all comes down to sales. No sales means a layoff.