Sniffer Sale Triggered McAfee Layoffs (100 jobs)

[UpInArms]

http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/breakingnews.jhtml?articleId=22104195

McAfee President Gene Hodges told CRN Wednesday that the final divestiture of McAfee's Sniffer product line required a reorganization that led to last week's layoffs.

Some 100 McAfee employees were shown the door. The layoffs hit all parts of McAfee's organization, not just sales, and everyone given a pink slip was what Hodges called "shared resources," meaning each had at least one foot in the functions of the Sniffer division.

"At the beginning of July, we organizationally separated Sniffer from the McAfee sales force," Hodges said. "We expect the Sniffer divestiture to close in the second half of July, but sales organizations need to run on clearly packaged quarters. That means that at the beginning of July we formally separated those sales organizations."

Of the sales people effected by the layoffs, Hodges said, "almost all were in the direct sales force, with a couple of channel people impacted due to territory shuffles."

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