Here to help—but not be helped.
Last week, Best Buy laid off Geek Squad Workers en masse, coincidentally before announcing its new generative AI assistant designed to provide customers with a “self-service” option just days later.
“Our leadership gave individual calls stating we were being let go for the simple fact that the company couldn’t afford to pay us, more or less,” a laid off worker told 404 Media. “It was extremely short notice and devastating.”
Fired employees told the outlet that the company informed them the next day would be a “work from home event.” That “event” was layoffs.
Warning
In an earnings call with investors in February, Best Buy CEO Corie Barry promised “operational effectiveness and efficiency,” adding that the company would be targeting “our Geek Squad repair operations, and our customer care experience.”
Wall Street reacted positively. Best Buy stock gained 0.67% on Monday, April 8, after 404 Media reported the layoffs on Friday.
Still, the mood on the Geek Squad subreddit—hardly a scientific sample but indicative of sentiment—was glum. “Has to be one of the worst company to work for,” one user commented. “Geek Squad is a sinking ship,” another posted.
The snap
The layoffs came as tech sector employment has experienced a quarter of disruption. Unemployment in the sector bumped up in February to 3.5%, but dropped in March to 3%. And as Morning Brew reported in January, the year began with a flurry of layoffs from companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon.
According to Layoff.fyi, a tech job tracker, 240 tech companies have laid off more than 58,800 employees in 2024 as of this writing.
A laid-off Geek Squad employee likened the Best Buy job cuts to a popular superhero movie franchise.
“Similar to what Thanos did in the Marvel movies, the company has been known to cut departments and services down sometimes in half constantly,” the former employee told 404 Media. “It’s to the point that a lot of areas are running skeleton crews.”
This report was initially published in IT Brew.