Intuit axes 3,000 - without blaming AI

Intuit reduced its full-time workforce by 17% and is considering closing offices in some markets to become faster, leaner, and more focused. Management studied blockers beyond new tools and identified excessive management layers that increased complexity in information flow. The company plans to push decision-making to frontline builders. Intuit also cut coordination-heavy roles such as project managers and business operations positions, citing reduced need as remaining teams build products faster. TurboTax and Credit Karma were merged into a single business unit, and some cuts came from overlap. The company plans stock repurchases alongside the restructuring, with expected restructuring charges of about $340 million, mainly severance.

"Intuit has cut its full time workforce by 17 percent and is considering closing offices in some markets "to become "faster, leaner, and more focused," company CEO Sasan Goodarzi told investors during a Wednesday earnings call. "This was not about AI," Goodarzi said, before explaining that over the last year company management has studied the question "beyond the tools that we are putting in place across the company, what is actually the biggest blocker and what is getting in our way?""

"One of the answers was that Intuit had too many layers of management. Goodarzi said doing so will "reduce the complexity of information flow of ... so we can push decision making to our frontline folks that are the builders." The CEO said Intuit also decided to cut in what he described as "coordination-heavy" roles such as project managers and business operations jobs that have become less necessary due to the speed at which the remaining teams can build products."

"He said Intuit also merged TurboTax and Credit Karma as a business unit so some of the cuts resulted from overlaps within that group. The move to fire over 3,000 employees comes as the company said it spent $3.4 billion in stock repurchases during the previous nine months ended April 30. Intuit's board of directors also mandated the company lean in to share buybacks as it authorized an additional $8 billion to be spent on Intuit stock at the discretion of management and the board."

"The job cuts are expected to cost the company about $340 million in restructuring charges, with much of that coming in the form of severance payments, according to SEC filings Intuit published Wednesday afternoon. "A big chunk of this, you can count on it to go to margin expansion and EPS growth, and a smaller part is going to be scaling the growth engines because we feel good that the growth engine"

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