Enterprise Linux supplier SUSE plans to cut approximately one in ten employees, with management citing automation and AI as reasons for the redundancies. The cuts affect a business with roughly 1,900 staff, putting approximately 190 jobs at risk.
SUSE chief executive Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen told employees that changing technology required the company to rethink its structure and costs. The promised productivity revolution has reached the payroll department with remarkable efficiency.
Management argues that AI tools are changing everyday work, reducing administrative burdens and making some existing positions less necessary. Other roles are expected to change during the next few years.
The memo does not identify which jobs will disappear or provide figures showing how much work AI has successfully absorbed. Staff are being asked to accept the redundancy arithmetic before seeing the workings.
Affected employees are due to be informed by 4 November, with employee representatives nominated the following day. Individual meetings are scheduled to begin next week.
The remaining workforce will hear about SUSE’s strategy for its 2027 financial year on 16 November. Those leaving will apparently receive the consequences before everyone else gets the presentation.
Van Leeuwen described the cuts as necessary for the company’s future, while assuring staff that their abilities were not the problem. Corporate appreciation remains considerably cheaper than continued employment.
The decision follows SUSE’s September approach to experienced employees about voluntary departures. The Register reports that the company had been asking whether longer-serving staff would consider leaving.
For those not in the know, Swedish private equity group EQT owns SUSE. It bought the business from Micro Focus in 2018 and floated it in Frankfurt in 2021. EQT took SUSE private again in 2023. Reuters reported in March that the owner was considering a potential sale, giving the restructuring a commercial context beyond management’s enthusiasm for AI.
Meanwhile, SUSE employees in the Czech Republic have joined a trade union. Faced with the latest software promising to improve their lives, some workers have chosen a more traditional way to protect their jobs.
