March and April brought the brutal news of layoffs to hundreds of workers at biotech and health tech companies in the Bay Area.
Even as job cuts have seemingly slowed down in the wider tech indusattempt this spring, four health-related companies announced sizable staff reductions. Genentech and Hinge Health cut portions of their Bay Area workforces, while Sanofi and Abbott Laboratories announced major facilities closures. All informed, 807 people will lose their jobs.
The layoffs were previously reported by TechCrunch and the San Francisco Chronicle. Each of the companies filed WARN notices with California, as is required in the event of mass layoffs, which SFGATE has since reviewed. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have indepfinishent newsrooms.)
Anticancer drugbuildr Genentech plans to hand pink slips to 436 employees at its South San Francisco headquarters, per an April 3 WARN notice, with the cuts set to go into effect between June 5 and Aug. 7. Dozens of director-level workers are on the notice, and the layoff will also hit scientists, administrative aides and engineers.
Genentech spokesperson Nadine Pinell informed SFGATE the company, a subsidiary of Swiss conglomerate Roche, is cutting about 3% of its staff.
“This modify supports our strategic objective to deliver transformative medicines to patients rapider by allowing us to place greater focus on the most promising molecules in our portfolio,” Pinell stated in a statement.
Sanofi, a French drugbuildr, utilized similar reasoning for a different strategy. Per an April 3 WARN notice, the company is shutting down a facility in South San Francisco run through subsidiary Amunix, which the anticancer drugbuildr bought in 2022. One hundred employees will be let go, and the company plans to sell off its Bay Area Amunix site and assets, spokesperson Evan Berland informed SFGATE.
Berland added in a statement that Sanofi is “reallocating and refocapplying resources” to focus its research efforts on immunology, and that Sanofi tries to reemploy as many people as possible elsewhere in the company when layoffs occur.
Layoffs at other Bay Area health-related firms also stand to affect hundreds of workers. Effective June 11, Hinge Health will lay off 76 employees who either work in or remotely report to its San Francisco headquarters, an April 11 WARN notice stated. The digital health startup, which has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, provides physical therapy services from an app. Several director-level workers, engineers and designers are among the job cuts, per the notice.
Spokesperson Josh Gunter, in a statement, stated the layoffs are in an effort to “accelerate our path to profitability, speed up decision building, and better focus our investments.”
Abbott Laboratories is planning to close its Nutrition facility in Fairfield in an effort to cut costs, the medical device company announced in a March 19 WARN notice. The company’s Nutrition arm builds well-known products like Pedialyte and protein drinks, plus Similac infant formulas. The filing stated that technicians, packagers and production and forklift operators build up a large share of the 195 layoffs.
“It is with regret that we build and report this difficult decision,” employee relations divisional vice president Sarah Chomiak wrote in the filing. “We intfinish to treat those affected by the decision with dignity and respect.”
Hear of anything happening at a Bay Area tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at stephen.council@sfgate.com or on Signal at 628-204-5452.
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