Tell me when this starts to sound familiar: BlackBerry is laying off some of its employees. Yeah, we’ve heard about the struggling handset maker cutting jobs more times than we can count, and the excuses remain the same. BlackBerry claims that this is being done in an effort to make itself more efficient and put more focus into important areas as the company continues to try and turn things around.
BlackBerry CEO John Chen has cut more jobs in his efforts to turn things around for the Canadian company’s struggling smartphone business. According to an email from BlackBerry, the move was made to improve efficiencies across the workforce. “As BlackBerry moves into the next stage of its turnaround, we remain focused on driving efficiencies across our global workforce,” Kara Yi, a spokeswoman for BlackBerry, said in an emailed statement to Bloomberg on Monday after the story was first reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. “As a result, some employees have been impacted.” BlackBerry has declined to confirm exactly how many employees were cut this time, or where they were based, but this isn’t the first time Chen has shrunk the company’s workforce to cut costs since he took over from Thorsten Heins in November 2013. Chen’s last cuts came in May, but again, BlackBerry refused to confirm how many employees were affected.
