According to Phoenix.com Technology, on December 18, Beijing time, Arm, a British chip design company under SoftBank Group, recently laid off more than 70 software engineers in China. But unlike most layoffs, which are job cuts, Arm has relocated some of those positions outside of China.
Arm outsourced its support for Chinese customers to Arm China through a division called Global Services, which at one point had about 200 employees, the people said. Employees in this sector will be laid off or relocated. Of the employees who have been laid off, about 15 will be placed in different positions on China-related projects. The positions were filled by contract software engineers who had worked on projects that spanned Arm's global operations.
In response, Arm said: "To ensure that the Chinese software ecosystem can take full advantage of Arm's performance and capabilities, Arm is restructuring its Chinese software engineering resources to focus on directly supporting local developers." ”
This is not the first layoff at ARM in the country this year. According to previous news reports, on February 11 this year, Reuters quoted three people familiar with the matter as saying that ARM China, a joint venture in China, laid off 90-95 employees last week to cope with the challenging business outlook this year. At that time, Reuters attributed the layoffs of ARM China to "business prospect challenges", but some domestic self-leaders pointed out that under normal circumstances, enterprises do not operate well, and often cut management, sales, marketing and other departments, while ARM China is laying off employees in the R&D department, which is more like having a strategic purpose.