The long discussed Beats and Apple merger has officially been finalized today and with that announcement comes the news of lay-offs.
Apple is planning to lay off around 200 Beats employees, which doesn’t seem like a big number until you realize that they only had a staff of around 700 people.
This nearly 30% lay-off rate is definitely hard hitting news for employees however no one can say it wasn’t to be expected.
Apple released an official statement about the lay-offs stating, “we’re excited to have the Beats team join Apple and we have extended job offers to every Beats employee.”
The tech giant continued, “Because of some overlap in our operations, some offers are for a limited period and we’ll work hard during this time to find as many of these Beats employees as we can another permanent job within Apple.”
Most of the job cuts for Beats employees will come from the human resources, finance and support departments as most of those positions will be filled by an Apple employee.
While the merger has been approved by everyone necessary, Apple already has a lot on their plates with Beats who is being sued by Bose for patent infringement.
However, as things go in Silicon Valley, patent infringement cases are almost a ‘rite of passage’ into stardom.