Ting Internet lays off 13% of workforce

The Charlottesville-based internet provider which services markets from coast to coast cited recent trends in the technology sector — which has shed tens of thousands of jobs in the first five weeks of 2024 already — as the reason behind the move.

“Based on the evolution of our business — and the fiber industry — over the last decade, our needs today are different than they were when Ting Internet first started,” Neith Myrick, Ting’s senior vice president and head of community affairs, told The Daily Progress Friday.

The layoffs will affect 72 Ting employees across multiple business teams and multiple geographic markets in North America, including three in Ting’s home state of Virginia, where Ting has operations in Charlottesville as well as Alexandria.

The decision was “a part of our normal strategic planning processes,” according to Myrick’s statement.

Ting’s 72 laid-off employees join roughly 25,000 of their tech colleagues who have lost their jobs thus far in 2024. Another 100,000 tech workers were laid off in 2023. Nearly 100 companies in the industry, including Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon, who all made significant cuts to their workforce during the first five weeks of the year, have pointed to fallout from the pandemic and persistent inflation as the driving forces behind the cuts.

However, those on the outside who study these technology titans have identified different reasons.

“There is a herding effect in tech,” Jeff Shulman, a professor at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, told NPR at the end of January. “The layoffs seem to be helping their stock prices, so these companies see no reason to stop.”

Jeffrey Pfeffer, a business professor at Stanford University, labeled the trend in a recent report “copycat layoffs,” in which tech companies are simply following the lead of others.

Another major internet provider, T-Mobile, announced in August that it was cutting 7% of its workforce, targeting roughly 5,000 employees in the technology sector of the business. A companywide email sent from T-Mobile President and CEO Mike Sievert at the time said the cuts were made to increase efficiency and reduce costs.

“Regardless of these changes, Ting’s commitment to serving our customers remains unchanged,” said Myrick. “Any change is hard but we’re so grateful for the team members who aimed high and helped build Ting with us over the past ten years.”