Qualcomm's Performance Layoffs Turn Annual Reviews Into Cuts

Qualcomm is turning its annual review cycle into a round of performance layoffs. Chief executive Cristiano Amon told employees in a memo on Monday that the chipmaker will cut jobs worldwide in what he described as a performance-focused reduction, according to Reuters, which reviewed the memo. Notifications are set to begin in November.

The memo did not say how many roles would go, and Reuters said it could not immediately determine the scale of the performance layoffs. The company had about fifty-two thousand employees worldwide as of last September, most of them full time, and its fiscal year typically ends in late September.

Amon framed the move as an effort to build a stronger performance culture, pointing to areas where the company had fallen short of expectations. He said business priorities, organizational needs, skills, and expertise would guide the performance layoffs.

Why the cuts are coming now

Qualcomm has had a difficult year. A slump in consumer electronics sales, made worse by soaring memory prices, has weighed on demand in key markets. The company's shares have risen just 1.5 percent in 2026, trailing gains of more than 12 percent for the S&P 500 and nearly 60 percent for the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index. The stock slipped about 1 percent in premarket trading on Tuesday. In its late-July earnings report, Qualcomm forecast quarterly profit below analyst estimates and said revenue from Apple products would fall faster than expected, while betting that growth in data centers and other non-handset businesses would more than offset the loss by fiscal 2027.

Qualcomm is one of the world's largest makers of smartphone chips, which makes the slump in handset demand a direct hit to its core business. The pivot it is betting on, AI data centers and other non-handset markets, is where the company says its future revenue will come from.

Performance layoffs are becoming a pattern

Qualcomm is not the first large tech employer to tie cuts to review season. In 2025, Meta targeted about 5 percent of its workforce, focusing on workers its managers had ranked at the bottom, and Microsoft has used performance reviews to guide layoff decisions, according to human-resources trade coverage. The appeal for executives is clear: performance layoffs framed as merit decisions draw less scrutiny than broad restructuring. For workers, the performance label can sting twice, since a layoff tied to reviews is harder to explain in the next job search.

The Qualcomm memo fits the pattern of performance layoffs closely. Reviews come first, the cuts follow, and the stated criteria, business priorities, organizational needs, skills, and expertise, point to where the company is heading rather than where it has been. Qualcomm expects most of its chip sales to come from businesses other than smartphones by fiscal 2027 as it pushes into AI data centers. Employees whose work sits in those growth areas have more cover than those in the shrinking ones.

What it means if you are early in your career

For younger workers, the lesson is that the annual review now carries more weight than a rating or a raise. When performance layoffs follow review season, the paper trail matters: documented results on the projects your employer has marked as priorities. Keeping that record through the year beats trying to reconstruct it after the memo goes out.

The cuts land in a job market that is already unforgiving for new graduates. Recent graduates face high underemployment and a shrinking share of entry-level postings, as recent labor data shows, and more than half of Gen Z professionals say they plan to look for a new job before the year ends, according to a recent survey. Against that backdrop, being swept up in performance layoffs is one more thing to manage, and one more reason to treat every review cycle as if the next memo is already being drafted.

There is also a practical step workers can take now: save copies of positive reviews, project outcomes, and peer feedback somewhere personal, not just on company systems. If performance layoffs ever put your name on a list, that file is what you bring to the next interview.