Comcast is laying off more than 600 Philly employees amid big cost-cutting transformation

Comcast is laying off 634 employees at its Philadelphia headquarters, as the telecommunications and media giant pursues a cost-cutting transformation and invests in artificial intelligence.

The layoffs are to begin taking effect Dec. 31, according to a notice the company filed with Pennsylvania regulators. The company has started notifying affected employees.

In addition to the layoffs in Pennsylvania, Comcast notified regulators that it was cutting 119 positions in New Jersey, 159 in Washington state, and 82 in California. Federal law requires large employers to notify regulators about layoffs that affect more than 50 people at a single employment site.

Workers described a tense atmosphere at the company’s two-building Center City headquarters, with one describing seeing people “crying in the halls or the bathrooms.”

“We are deeply grateful to the colleagues whose roles are affected and for the contributions they have made to Comcast,” said a company statement shared by spokesperson John Demming on Friday. “Philadelphia is our home. It’s where our company was founded and built, and it remains central to who we are and our future.”

The company is planning to hire for more than 1,100 new positions as part of the restructuring, including more than 500 in Philadelphia, according to the layoff notice.

“Comcast is fundamentally redesigning our organization to build a more agile company and better serve our customers,” the company statement said. “These changes will help us accelerate innovation and compete more effectively in a rapidly changing industry.”

Dozens of Comcast employees across the U.S. have posted about the job losses this week on LinkedIn as they seek to tap their networks for new opportunities. Among the affected workers are engineers, product managers, executive assistants, social media analysts, construction specialists, business analysts, and information technology leaders.

Several Comcast employees spoke with The Inquirer but requested anonymity so as not to endanger their severance or jeopardize future employment.

“As a millennial, I’m starting to think ‘unprecedented times’ are actually just ... times,” wrote one Philadelphia worker who said her position had been eliminated after more than eight years at the company.

Comcast employs 179,000 full-time and part-time workers across several countries, including 15,000 in the Philadelphia area.

The job losses at one of Philadelphia’s largest employers come a week after company executives said on an earnings call that they are “fundamentally redesigning our organization” to “move faster, improve execution, and operate more efficiently.”

Executives said they plan to accomplish that in part by deploying AI agents to connect with customers.

Employees interviewed by The Inquirer said anxiety around potential cuts spiked after chief financial officer Jason Armstrong said during an early September Goldman Sachs conference that Comcast had embarked “on the largest cost transformation in the company’s history.”

“For seven weeks everyone’s kinda been panicking,” said one worker who was laid off. “They knew there were gonna be thousands of cuts but didn’t understand who, or how, or why.”

Another sign of things to come: Comcast brought on management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. to advise the company, according to multiple employees. McKinsey consultants started showing up at Philadelphia headquarters around the time of the Goldman conference, one of the employees said.

“Our larger team had meetings with senior leadership saying, ‘There’s gonna be some changes,’” said one laid-off employee who worked at the company for five years.

But that employee said he wasn’t surprised by the cuts, given that Comcast has been losing cable customers for years and has also faced challenges in the broadband internet market.

“I guess you could arguably say the writing was on the wall for years,” the employee said. “We’re losing customers, and we’re not changing how we operate.”

Rumors that Comcast might merge with Stamford, Conn.-based cable and internet provider Charter Communications — a subject of speculation on Wall Street — also have been weighing on morale.

“We know merging with another company [would] bring another wave of layoffs,” said another employee who lost their job after more than half a decade, describing the mood inside the company in recent weeks.

Workers also are wondering what the restructuring means for Comcast’s identity. The cuts come after Comcast in June said it plans to split into two publicly traded companies, spinning off NBCUniversal and European television company Sky.

“Are we trying to merge with Charter into one giant nationwide cable-internet behemoth?” said the employee with five years at the company. “Or are we trying to slim down to be acquired by Netflix or somebody?”

“Who is Comcast now?” said one employee in the legal department. “You want to make it leaner, you want to be more agile — to what end? Is it that you’re trying to be this cutting-edge technology company? Is it that you’re trying to be an internet company? ... What are you trying to be?”

Executives have yet to articulate a new vision, said the employee with five years at the company. “The top-down communication has been completely anemic,” he said.

While Comcast has not publicly announced the size of the total job cuts across the business, other big companies in recent months have been more specific. Tech giant Microsoft this week said it was offering buyouts to about 60,000 employees. Earlier this year, Facebook parent Meta Platforms told staff it planned to cut 10% of its workforce. And streaming platform Netflix in October told employees it was laying off 6% of its workforce.

A Comcast employee in the construction department got pulled into a virtual meeting this week with dozens of others where he learned he would be laid off. He doesn’t know who will take over his work — but it can’t just be eliminated. The work has to get done, he says. The construction department maintains and builds Comcast’s infrastructure for internet, video, and phone services.

“Everybody’s scared,” he said. “Nobody quite knows if they’re next or not. I certainly didn’t see it coming.”

“I’ve got a family to support, so it was pretty crushing,” he said.