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Arm Loses 40% of UK Staff Despite SoftBank Pledge To Grow Domestic Workforce (seekingalpha.com) 18

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Seeking Alpha: Arm, the chip design firm owned by SoftBank, has seen more than 40% of its U.K. workforce that it gained in recent years leave the company, the Financial Times reported (paywalled). SoftBank purchased Arm in 2016 for $32 billion and made a commitment to the U.K. government that it would double the company's British staff in five years, then at a level of 1,770 employees, the news outlet reported. By September 2021, U.K.-based staff had reached more than 3,500, accounting for slightly more than half of Arm's 6,950 global employees, accomplishing the goal.

Since then, however, SoftBank has cut a significant portion of Arm's staff, totaling some 18%, as it readies for an initial public offering, with the U.K. taking a larger proportional hit on worries over the company's future, the news outlet reported, citing former Arm employees. Currently, Arm has 2,800 U.K.-based employees, meaning 700 U.K. employees have left the company. Led by Masayoshi Son, SoftBank is intent on listing Arm via an initial public offering and has been lobbied by British lawmakers to list it in London, as well as New York. However, SoftBank reportedly scrapped its plans for a London listing in July.

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Arm Loses 40% of UK Staff Despite SoftBank Pledge To Grow Domestic Workforce

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  • It remains to be seen exactly how it will end up going badly; but it's hard to be too reassured by anything a VC sufficiently desperate to cash out that he's open to whatever the white collar chop shop sector has in mind says about your job security.

    Luckily for Softbank it's not like basically all of ARM's value beyond the immediate term depends on their continued reputation as a particularly well supported embedded ecosystem worth paying the premium for rather than doing more DIY with one of the free bu
    • ARM maturity peaked some time ago, now you have fluff and add-ons - but nothing much. Oh, but there are errors and re-shrink considerations, and that founding? Apple and Broadcom have a deadly interest in growing - and not adding much to the bottom line. I recall the story that Z80 was created by pretty much 2-16 employees. Modern CPU's are often constructed by buying units from other people, or in the case of Intel, their 'gifting' of defective pre-execution units often without zeroing side memory. Profit
    • I'm picking up on your sarcasm.
    • Maybe it is time to rename ARM to All Thumbs or something.
  • ...an Arm and a Leg.

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  • Musk, Microsoft, or Oracle becoming dominant shareholders.
  • Brexit, and in general world wide nationalism. A pandemic, supply issues. Also major vendor like Apple, moving to make their own chips, and increase vertical integration.

    Any one of these issues, would not be a big deal, but it is just kinda a perfect storm that would be tough for a company like Arm.

    • Arm doesn't make chips so Apple's use of Arm is part of what's keeping it alive-- the royalty revenue.
      • Apple, every phone manufacturer, every WiFi router manufacturer, every tablet manufacturer, every... Even Windows runs on ARM now.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      A few years ago they asked me to interview. The guy didn't call at the agreed time and I declined to re-schedule. In prep for the interview I had pretty much come to the conclusion that I wasn't going to accept it anyway. ARM seemed to have a very strong corporate culture and structure, something I strongly dislike. Pay was pretty average, and most of the job seemed to be helping noob programmers trying to develop embedded ARM systems, which sounds awful.

  • If they did somebody would hold them accountable, right?
  • by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2022 @09:09PM (#62939315)
    I had to read TFS a couple times to figure out how they got the 40% figure.

    SoftBank purchased Arm in 2016 for $32 billion and made a commitment to the U.K. government that it would double the company's British staff in five years, then at a level of 1,770 employees, the news outlet reported. By September 2021, U.K.-based staff had reached more than 3,500, accounting for slightly more than half of Arm's 6,950 global employees, accomplishing the goal.

    Currently, Arm has 2,800 U.K.-based employees, meaning 700 U.K. employees have left the company.

    So UK staff started at 1770 employees in 2016, grew to 3500+ a year ago, and then shrank to 2800 today.

    The 40% is the percentage of employees gained since the pledge in 2016 that were lost over the last year:

    -700 / (3500-1770)

    The headline as written sounds like 40% of employees have been lost since the acquisition, but that figure is actually a 58% increase:

    (2800-1770) / 1770

    • I spotted that too. 3500/700 is 20%, which is close to the 18% global headcount reduction TFS mentioned. The writers were looking for a sensational angle. Either way, sounds like itâ(TM)s not been a nice place to work recently.

      • by ras ( 84108 )

        Either way, sounds like itâ(TM)s not been a nice place to work recently.

        ARM switched to SAP after the takeover.

        Everyone in the industry knows SAP is horrible - it's UI is famously incomprehensible, it's hideously expensive, it's a straight jacket (you have to change your business practices to the SAP way), and if those technical reasons aren't your thing, there is a long history multi-billion dollar failures (most of these failures [cio.com] are SAP installations).

        If technical reasons are your thing, it has it'

  • Any relation to Goku?
  • I notice they don't want to list in London..maybe because everyone's moving out.

    Wonder how much was "just" Brexit, and how much Truss' speech, and her idiot Chancellor....

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