Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Businesses

DocuSign To Lay Off 10% of Its Workforce (cnbc.com) 30

E-signature software company DocuSign on Thursday announced plans to cut around 10% of its workforce. CNBC reports: DocuSign had 7,461 employees in January 2022 before it announced an earlier round of layoffs last September that impacted 9% of its workforce. The company said the latest cuts will impact about 700 employees. DocuSign said it is cutting employees in order to support the company's growth, scale and profitability objectives. It will take an impairment charge of approximately $25 million to $35 million, primarily in the first quarter of fiscal 2024, as a result of the layoffs. The restructuring plan will likely be complete by the end of the second quarter, the company said.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

DocuSign To Lay Off 10% of Its Workforce

Comments Filter:
  • Employee decimation is the new norm. Why don't CEOs cut ELT and line manager salaries by 10% first?

    • My opinion is companies should cut salaries at the top until they are reduced to match next level salaries, and so on until they are all making the same low wage. After all, the highest earners tend to lose their fancy standard of living while the lowest earners tend to lose the essentials of life.

      • That's not how any of this works. We must protect the wealthy and ultra-wealthy at all costs. They are, after all, the best of us, as we are constantly reminded. The rest of us only matter when they can make more money off of us. Otherwise? We're less than cattle. At least cattle have some ultimate use. Too many? Kill 'em off and have a feast. When there's too many humans? Just keep firing them and then wondering why your cities are stacked with homeless encampments. And then the ultra-wealthy get to compla

      • by thomn8r ( 635504 )

        My opinion is companies should cut salaries at the top until they are reduced to match next level salaries,

        Funniest thing I've read all day! Please, stop, my sides hurt!

    • How do you know they weren't?

      It's common practice in RIFs, for remaining employees to take a pay cut, and for executives to take a bigger pay cut than the lower ranks. My company, in the mortgage industry, literally did just this.

  • What does a company like DocuSign need a lot of people for? Maybe they have some new products in development, but most people know of their one product where you "sign" PDF files online. I have no idea why it counts as a signature, but it sure is convenient, so I'm perfectly happy with it. But I would think apart from some minimal HR, legal, and IT, all they really need is sales and marketing, which shouldn't take that many people

    If someone inside the company has some insights as to what they're doing wi

    • That's not that many people. As you say, it's not just developers, they need marketing and sales in major markets as well as support that speaks the local languages. Then HR, accounting, payroll, facilities, etc, to support them.

      The more customers you have the more overhead there is. I work at a large B2B software company and we have hundreds people whose only job is coming up with ways to classify and categorize our accounts.

    • Sales, ironically for DocuSign, often needs physical visits as we are social animals. Travel time means that it can take a lot of people to achieve this relative to company size as you cannot rely on network effects to sell your product.
    • My previous company had a docusign subscription and I was involved in making their SaaS work with our Sales/CRM.

      Docusign had salespeople and also onboarding people who clearly were junior delivery consultant types. Given Docusign has integrations with many types of business software I am not surprised they are a large-ish software house AND a professional services seller.

  • by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Friday February 17, 2023 @01:52AM (#63300591) Homepage

    My company just had its 4th RIF in 6 months. In December, I started interviewing. It was not at all hard to find opportunities, even though I'm over 50 and was looking for a leadership role. I had several interview processes going at the same time.

    The stats bear it out too. Unemployment is the lowest it's been since 1969. https://tradingeconomics.com/u... [tradingeconomics.com].

    I think we have a situation where big-name companies over-hired in the pandemic, and now they are returning to something more like "normal."

    • by monkeyxpress ( 4016725 ) on Friday February 17, 2023 @06:39AM (#63300819)

      Yeah, but this is why all these companies making record profits are cutting workforce.

      The dirty secret of modern central banking/economics is that it relies on maintaining a certain level of unemployment to keep wage pressures down. They really don't care that much about CPI inflation directly, what they care about is wage inflation because that is how you get an inflationary feedback spiral (CPI is a useful precursory indicator though which is why they monitor it).

      So what the govt/central bank (and they are united on this) want is to boot enough people out of employment so that those that remain stop asking for wage rises. The sooner they can do this, the sooner they can stop raising (or even cut) interest rates, which is why there is such a concerted effort to talk down the economy.

      I actually find it quite bizzare that our economic model can't handle full employment without entering an inflationary spiral. It seems like there should be some solution to this other than condemning a portion of society to poverty just to keep the other scared. But it's inherent in free market capitalism (and also appears in other models, so not just capitalism's fault), and it's also not just a problem that occurs under a fiat money system.

      • I agree that your underlying premise is sound. The Fed wants to keep wages from rising too much, because that in turn leads to inflation (higher CPI), and the process does cause some people to lose their jobs.

        What I don't agree with you about, is that this is inherently bad. Rather, it's a delicate balance. And it's not just the US Fed. Every single central bank in the world approaches inflation / wage growth / interest rates in basically the same way.

        You talk about poor people, as if society, or the Fed, d

        • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          Full employment isn't a thing. It's never been achieved anywhere. Inflationary spirals hurt people far worse than 3% unemployment. Go ahead, find me an example of any place in the world, where this wasn't proven true.

          There will never be 100% employment. Because there will always be someone, somewhere who decides the grass is greener elsewhere and start looking for a job. And there will be people who are so pissed off with their job that they will quit on the spot.

          Generally speaking, once you have unemployme

      • There is no free market capitalism in a system where the money supply is controlled by the government and it is controlled by the government. Also what free market capitalism are you talking about in a system that is so fully regulated by governments, that is so filled with government corruption? it's ridiculous.

  • All a DocuSign "signed" document proves is that someone has access to the so-called signer's email account. ("Security theater is the practice of taking security measures that are considered to provide the feeling of improved security while doing little or nothing to achieve it... coined by computer security specialist and writer Bruce Schneier." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] )

  • by mrsam ( 12205 ) on Friday February 17, 2023 @08:02AM (#63300919) Homepage

    So, this is a web site that offers Party A the ability to log in, and upload a PDF file.

    Then, this web site offers Party B the ability to log in, look at the PDF file, and upload Party B's own file, an image of whatever Party B claims its signature to be, and then it attaches it to the PDF file, in a designated place.

    Then both Party A and B get a copy of a result, timestamped and digitally signed.

    And it requires seven thousand people to run a web site that does all this?

    • by kbahey ( 102895 )

      And it requires seven thousand people to run a web site that does all this?

      That was exactly my response to this: What? 7,000+ people for a web app?

      Say you have 2 or 3 dozen developers.
      Add twice that for taking care of the servers.
      And twice that for marketing and sales.
      And the same for HR, accounting, ...etc.

      Comes to a couple of hundred, or several hundred at most.

      7,000? That is 10X what is needed ...

      What do these people do?

Don't panic.

Working...