Apple to Slash 200 Jobs at Beats


With every big tech acquisition, there’s usually good news for consumers, and bad news for employees. That was certainly the case when Microsoft acquired Nokia this year, potentially ushering in a new era for Windows Phone – and then announcing that 12,500 Nokia employees would lose their jobs within the next six months. Apparently Apple’s heading down that same road with its recent acquisition of Beats Music, as 200 employees will reportedly be laid off.

A post on 9to5Mac yesterday reveals that Apple has started to notify some Beats employees that they won’t be holding onto their jobs as Apple finalizes its takeover of the headphone and music-streaming company started by Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine. According to the post, employees from the support, finance, and human resources departments at Beats have already started losing their jobs while a few have been “offered positions until the end of January 2015.”

A post on CNET follows up on those reports and, citing “a source with knowledge of the restructuring,” claims that roughly 200 employees at Beats will have lost their jobs when all is said and done.

This news, of course, is nowhere near the magnitude of Microsoft’s forthcoming layoffs, but that’s also because Beats is not nearly the same size of Nokia, and as such, there couldn’t be as many people laid off as a result. Hopefully the people affected by these layoffs won’t be without work for too long. According to the 9to5Mac post, Apple is actively helping laid off employees with their severance packages and transition plans. If nothing else, being laid off by Apple means you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding new work somewhere else.

[Sources: 9to5Mac and CNET]