A Symantec employee tells us that on April 18, management will cut most of the company's engineers in Durham, North Carolina and over a third of its Mountain View workforce. "This is not unexpected," our tipster tells us. "Since the merger of Veritas and Symantec there has been a layoff each spring and fall." Employees have, however, confronted management to ask why a software security firm would lay of security developers first.

At an all hands meeting last week [Symantec COO] Enrique Salem tap-danced around the question from an employee dealing with "If Symatnec claims to be a security company why are we laying off the folks that do security, authentication and authorization, for Netbackup, and other Veritas products?"

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