Qualcomm's "Performance-Focused" Cuts: The Word Is Doing All the Work

Qualcomm calls its global reduction a "performance-focused" one, yet its own memo says the selection also weighed business priorities, organisational needs and the skills the company requires. Engineers rated 3, 4 and 4, one awaiting a promotion, were cut. This post separates a performance cut from a product-cycle cut, argues that the label quietly moves a corporate risk onto individual CVs, asks Qualcomm India to publish its criteria and cohort data, and re-pitches my Co-operative Capacity Centre idea for its Bengaluru and Hyderabad engineers.

On 19 October Qualcomm's chief executive, Cristiano Amon, told staff in an internal memo that the company was making a "performance-focused reduction" after its annual review cycle. Calcalist, covering the India leg on 11 November, quotes what the memo says next: decisions would also weigh "business priorities, organizational needs, and the skills and expertise" the company requires.

Both clauses cannot be doing the same work. If you are trimming the bottom of a rating distribution, "skills and expertise" adds nothing. That clause is there because this is at least partly a skills-mix cut, and a skills-mix cut is a different animal.

The shape of it, per The Economic Times (12 November) and CTech (11 November):

• about 20,000 employees in India, in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai and the National Capital Region — ET
• the 1,000 figure is an industry estimate; local reports range from 600 to 1,200, and the company has confirmed nothing — CTech
• handset revenue down 26% year on year to $5.14 billion, chip revenue down 8% — CTech
• about 57,000 employees at end-September, against 52,000 a year earlier — CTech

Qualcomm did not respond to ET's request for comment. So nobody outside knows the true size of the cut, or how many of those cut were strong performers. Employees are filling that gap. One engineer who joined in Bengaluru four years ago says his last three ratings were 3, 4 and 4, and that he expected promotion to Senior Engineer when he was told he was going. A senior ASIC design verification engineer with nearly seven years says he was out on 9 November. Unverified posts, but they fit the memo's second clause exactly.

"Performance" is a fault word. It says: you fell short. A product-cycle cut says something else — the handset market moved, and the skills we need moved with it. Legally, a performance exit and a redundancy invite different questions, and only one of them needs its selection rationale written down. Reputationally, you cannot credibly hire AI talent in one corridor — Naukri's October 2026 JobSpeak data put AI/ML roles up 32% year on year against 5% for IT services — while telling another corridor it failed. Morally, a pivot is a company risk; "performance" moves it onto a CV.

So my ask of Qualcomm India is three disclosures:

1. the selection criteria actually used, in the words used;
2. the cohort — team, tenure, rating band, and whether a requisition for that role still exists;
3. if a model or ranking tool produced the shortlist, say so, and treat it as a decision needing audit and human review, as I argued in When AI Becomes Your Boss (May 2026).

And the alternative I keep re-pitching. In Co-operative Capacity Centres (CCC), July 2025, and in my letter to TCS's chief executive as A Humane Transition Plan for the 12,000 TCS Employees, I proposed a voluntary co-operative of the people being let go: the firm outsources to it at 50% of internal cost, members are paid part-time against their last-drawn hourly rate, premises come from CSR, and membership ends on full-time work elsewhere. Qualcomm India is thinning radio-frequency, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and satellite-navigation teams while it needs data-centre skills. Keep some of that skill half-attached.

I may be wrong that a co-op is the best instrument here. I am fairly sure a severance cheque should not be the only one.

With regards,
Hemen Parekh
www.Iam-Immortal.ai / www.IndiaAGI.ai / www.YourContentCreator.in
12 November 2026