Telcordia lays off 5% of work force

(Telephony) Telcordia Technologies, Inc., the communications software, professional services and research company, will lay off about 5% of its work force, effective tomorrow. In a formal statement issued today, the company said it was “also taking additional steps to reduce capital expenditures and contractors, and to decrease the number of open positions.”

A Telcordia spokeswoman said the layoffs would take place “across the board”, and would not be focused on any one part of the company. However, she said organizations would not be required to reduce headcount by 5% each. The spokeswoman said she couldn’t say where, geographically, the layoffs would land.

Nonetheless, 87% of Telcordia’s 7,400 employees work in New Jersey. Indeed, 79% of Telcordia’s New Jersey employees work in Piscataway, about 20 miles southwest of Newark. Those employees include almost all the software programmers and engineers. The spokeswoman said there is less demand for Telcordia’s telecommunications software, because there is less demand for the telecommunications equipment that software manages.

Telcordia, based in Morristown, NJ, was born in the break-up of the Bell System. It was hived off from Bell Laboratories and owned by the seven regional Bell companies from 1984 until 1997, when the Bells sold it to Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), whose wholly owned subsidiary it remains. SAIC was forced to change the company’s name as part of the sale. Its last large-scale layoffs came in the summer and fall of 1992.