Dell's Staff Numbers Have Dropped By 25,000 in Just 2 Years (businessinsider.com) 35
Computer maker Dell's staff numbers have fallen by 25,000 in the last two years. In its latest 10-K filing, published on Tuesday, the company said that it had about 108,000 global employees as of January 31, 2025. In February 2024, that number was 120,000, marking a 10% annual reduction in the workforce. From a report: Looking back two years, Dell's head count stood at 133,000, meaning that since February 2023, the Texas-based tech company has reduced its workforce by 19%. The decline in Dell's head count comes after a year of both layoffs and RTO mandates. In August, the company significantly restructured its sales division, which it told workers was necessary to prepare for "the world of AI." As part of the restructuring, Dell laid off workers, though it did not specify how many.
I believe it (Score:2)
And they're all people who a) speak English, and b) actually know what the hell they're doing.
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I honestly don't know what Dell's products are. In my mind they just sell computers made of parts that other companies make. I'm probably wrong about that. Maybe they manufacture their own LCD screens? I haven't seen a Dell - anything in a while. I see their stock went up 200% in value between 2023 and 2024 but I don't know why. I would guess AI hype? Maybe if the article wasn't gated all these questions would be answered.
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Re:I believe it (Score:5, Insightful)
I honestly don't know what Dell's products are
Don't spend much time in the server room or datacenter cage, do you?
Dell is the compute and storage backbone of where I am now, and where I was back in the early 00's. And also in the 10's.
It's more than desktops and laptops aimed at the public, if I had to venture a guess, I'd say they make more $ off enterprise than they do selling to the public.
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and where I was back in the early 00's.
Poor child. You missed the "rack a Sun pizza box and make the 24" monitor disappear" 90's...
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And for the real youngsters... That was back when a 24" monitor was a $4,000 Sony Triniton tube in a package that weighed 80lbs and degaussed you credit card every morning when you turned it on...
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And for the real youngsters... That was back when a 24" monitor was a $4,000 Sony Triniton tube in a package that weighed 80lbs and degaussed you credit card every morning when you turned it on...
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Ha, whippersnapper... I still have to wait for these reeds to dry into parchment.
Seriously though, I remember those MFers. Heavy but good. I remember replacing CRTs with LCD monitors in the early 00s, the last guy on the list, who was happy to be last, was a photogrammetry specialist who had two 24" Trinitons. We used to joke that you couldn't go near his desk if you had fillings.
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I honestly don't know what Dell's products are
Don't spend much time in the server room or datacenter cage, do you?
Dell is the compute and storage backbone of where I am now, and where I was back in the early 00's. And also in the 10's.
It's more than desktops and laptops aimed at the public, if I had to venture a guess, I'd say they make more $ off enterprise than they do selling to the public.
It still is.
If you want to host anything secure (DOD, MOD, finance, insurance, et al) you're limited to a short list of suppliers that basically is DELL or HP and HP are complete shit.
When you consider most of their laptops are sold to enterprises as well, their consumer business is more of a side hustle.
It wouldn't surprise me to learn that most of the staff that have gone in the last two years were consultants selling enterprise services rather than to do with servers and hardware, not to mention
Re:I believe it (Score:5, Informative)
I honestly don't know what Dell's products are. In my mind they just sell computers made of parts that other companies make. I'm probably wrong about that. Maybe they manufacture their own LCD screens? I haven't seen a Dell - anything in a while. I see their stock went up 200% in value between 2023 and 2024 but I don't know why. I would guess AI hype? Maybe if the article wasn't gated all these questions would be answered.
It's a grey area. Their computers aren't "made of parts that other companies make" in the sense of throwing an ASUS motherboard, some Crucial memory and some random power supply into an Antec case and calling it a day. The PCBs are their own - proprietary - layout, and the cases are custom fabbed unique ones. Same with their power supplies. But they are in the sense that even those parts are assuredly churned out in a factory somewhere that they likely do not own.
Their monitors are their own brand, but it's likely the panels are made by someone like Samsung, same as every other monitor brand.
Same goes for the PowerEdge servers... it's Intel processors and WD/Seagate drives, but custom everything else around them.
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The PCBs are their own - proprietary - layout, and the cases are custom fabbed unique ones. Same with their power supplies.
Those are all great reasons not to buy their PCs.
Yeah yeah, we all know, you're not supposed to ever fix a PC any more, you're supposed to swap in a spare. But if you have to for some stupid reason, you're screwed for parts. It's no consolation that you are in a hell of your own making.
Re: I believe it (Score:2)
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Dell is more popular because their only competition as huge, well known manufacturers of desktops is HP.
Re:I believe it (Score:4)
You seem to have forgotten about Lenovo, who has a larger market share than HP.
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I honestly don't know what Dell's products are. In my mind they just sell computers made of parts that other companies make. I'm probably wrong about that. Maybe they manufacture their own LCD screens?
You're thinking of the consumer side of the company. Dell also makes a ton of high-margin data center gear. Storage systems in particular have very high gross margins.
Even on the consumer side Dell puts a ton of design work into the devices. It's not just pick a laptop off a Foxconn menu.
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Ahh. Data center gear has got to be a pretty profitible thing to do these days. So that's where Dell's been making its money.
Dude, You're Getting A Pink Slip! (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe Compaq is hiring.
Dell sales is useless (Score:5, Insightful)
Every few months a new person from Dell sends me an email informing me that they are now my account rep. They tell me to contact them for purchases. I go to dell.com and find what I want, I ask my rep for a quote, the quote comes back for more than a direct purchase on the web site. They tell me I need their crappy support contracts. What a bunch of crap. Since Dell does not empower sales, Dell does not need sales. If the reps could actually do what they say they can do I might actually buy more.
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even send a person out to the site the next business day to help troubleshoot the issue. That can save a business from some VERY expensive downtime. You don't get that service if you just buy from the website.
They'll sell you 4 hour response in some markets. The same outsourced Unisys guy shows up, and is now allowed overtime, and they rent a bathroom stall at a nearby gas station somewhere to store spare parts...
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Almost all Dell sales come with one year of that support, I'm quite familiar. Dell expects you to replace everything every 3 years and they price those contracts accordingly. To each his own. I've had the Unisys guy blow me off when I really needed him. I've had the Unisys guy in the datacenter powering off the wrong box, repeatedly, and then deny it - talk about down time.
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You claim to provide better pricing? Okay, do it.
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Either your old account rep dumped you as a customer cause you were making their numbers look bad
Their numbers are bad, they're giving higher than single unit pricing for volume sales. That's bad, and it's not the customer's fault.
They make (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong - this isn't meant to be a slam on Dell. When I want a corporate windows laptop that will just-simply-work (tm) , managed by the IT department, and I really dont give a damn that it's 8mm thicker than an apple, Dell and HP are great. I don't need to think about it at all and I don't care if I drop kick it aro
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Dell is large (Score:2)
"Dell Technologies has a total of 51,713 patents globally. These patents belong to 34,380 unique patent families. Out of 51,713 patents, 46,587 patents are active."
That's a company reporting 93 billion in revenue. Compare that to IBM, who's last revenue report was 64 billion:
"IBM has a total of 122110 patents globally, out of which 35080 have been granted. Of these 122110 patents, 72,044 are active."
IBM has a lot more active patents, and a lot more early patents that are still active. It's not clear how muc
Remember the stealth layoffs? (Score:2)
https://www.computerworld.com/... [computerworld.com]
Looks like they were quite successful!
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A lot weren't stealth. I know a number of people who were overtly laid off.
Word has it the Highly Paid Consultants wanted them to get headcount down to 100k. Looks like they're close.
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A lot weren't stealth
And this reinforces that the strict RTO policy was very likely indeed, a stealth layoff. It's cheaper to lay off people when they leave on their own, than when you "overtly" fire them.
Dell went all-in on Intel, and this happens (Score:2)
Dell made a point of sabotaging the design of any AMD based computers they would release, just to make Intel look better. Put a garbage Intel cooler on an AMD processor, and you have a poorly cooled chip. Now, put a drive of some sort right above the cooler to choke the airflow, and you have a machine designed to thermal throttle. That's what Dell was doing, intentionally sabotaging the performance of Ryzen computers to make Intel look better.
Did they account for M&A? (Score:2)