Cyanogen cuts down 20 percent jobs; plans strategic shift: Report

Cyanogen has allegedly cut down 20 percent of its workforce as its OS fails to attract phone makers and audiences. The job cuts mostly impacted people working only on the open source side, reports AndroidPolice. Citing sources close to the matter, the report adds that Systems and QA teams in Palo Alto and Seattle have been asked to leave, along with employees and smaller offices in Lisbon and India. Meanwhile Re/Code  claims that the job cuts come as a result of the startup working on a new strategy that is being overseen by Chief Operating Officer Lior Tal who has joined the company recently from Facebook. Several top executive are already believed to have quit. The startup had raised a lot of money in the bid to offer an alternative to Google’s version of Android, but had failed to do so. The AndroidPolice report states that employees were called into meetings and asked to leave. Steve Kondik, himself is said to have conducted layoffs in Seattle. Out of the 136 people, 30 have been reportedly fired. The jobs cuts are due to company’s plans of a major strategic shift, which reportedly involves ‘pivot to apps’. “It’s not clear what such a pivot would entail - perhaps in some way it could involve the company’s MOD initiative, but that’s total speculation,” the report adds. There was no prior notification and employees who didn’t lose their jobs were asked to not make it work, and the ones who did were asked to leave. “They had generic human resources meetings rather ominously added to their calendars. So, everyone who arrived at Cyanogen Inc. in Seattle did so to lose their job (aside from those conducting the layoffs). That’s a bit grim,” points out the report.