Hyperoptic sheds 110 jobs in strategic rejig

UK altnet Hyperoptic is laying off 5% of its workforce as it moves to refocus on regions that offer the best opportunities for customer acquisition.

The news was first reported by the Telegraph late last week, then directly confirmed by Hyperoptic. “In support of our continued growth at Hyperoptic, we have refocused around 40 employees on customer-facing engineering roles, and are proposing to make around 110 redundancies in the UK as we increase our focus on areas that offer us the greatest customer reach,” said Dana Tobak, Founder & CEO at Hyperoptic.

“Where necessary for the customer-centric roles, we will provide support and training to help keep our people in Hyperoptic – building on their skills, experience and expertise. For those employees that do move on from Hyperoptic, we will ensure the support they receive reflects the great work they have delivered for this company.”

Tobak’s framing of the job cuts, which amount to around 5% of the total workforce, is somewhat counterintuitive, since growth is more usually supported by increasing headcount. She could have been thinking of profitability but growth usually refers to revenue. The 40 employees being refocused on customer connections over general network build makes more sense, especially if you read between the lines that this is a strategic pivot towards improving the bottom line.

We also understand that at least some of the job cuts are from regions where the network build is considered complete. Additionally, part of the revised strategy involves a greater focus on new builds. In the current macroeconomic climate redundancies have become commonplace, so it seems reasonable to take Tobak’s statement at face value, especially since Hyperoptic has grown fairly rapidly since it was founded in 2010.

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