Hyperconverged darling Nutanix to furlough at least a quarter of its staff – 1,465 – for two weeks this year

Cites uncertain business conditions and they sure are - even tilers working for Microsoft have felt the crunch

Nutanix will send at least a quarter of its staff home for two weeks on no pay this year.

The company this month filed [.XLSX] word of the temporary furlough with California’s Employment and Development Department, revealing that 1,465 staff were to be stood down. Nutanix’s 2019 annual report said it had 5,340 staff as of July 31, 2019, and that number grew by almost 1,000 in the previous year.

The Register understands the company will ask the impacted workers to take one week off between now and late July, then another between August and late October.

“Uncertain business conditions” were cited as the reason for the stand-downs.

Nutanix has told customers that the furloughs won’t in any way disrupt services or support.

The hyperconverged technology upstart was having a difficult 2020 before the COVID-19 coronavirus sent much of the world to work from home: its Q2 earnings met market expectations but it forecast a weak Q3 and investors gave its share price a walloping.

The company remains vigorous and points to growing subscription revenue as evidence it has deep incumbency with its customers. It also has a new business on the boil, targeting simplified database administration and won the whale that is Wipro to advance its cause.

While the Nutanix employees impacted by the stand-down orders won’t be laughing off the loss of some wages, many others face bigger challenges. Some 30 million have applied for unemployment assistance across the USA. California reported 3,205 layoff notices covering 321,079 people in April alone. Between August 2019 and February 2020 notices were in a range between 138 and 39, and layoffs in a range between 9,700 and 2,700.

However Nutanix’s stand-downs stand out in California’s data, which is dominated by hospitality and retail workers. Other tech companies to lay off workers since April 1 include Norton Lifelock (28) and Tickets.com (96)

The data is also reveals the depth of the problems caused by coronavirus: one entry is for a company named US Perma Inc that has stood down 25 tile installers working at Microsoft. ®