Laid off from F5.

What F5 layoffs have meant for employees

If you work at F5, its recurring cuts have started in the quarter after each September close, and the company's fiscal 2025 annual report lists the three most recent of those plans in one note. None of those autumn rounds turns up among the state notices in our WARN tracker, so each one is documented by a line in F5's filings and, for some, a press report.

The April 2023 cut also hit the bonuses of people who stayed. F5's chief executive gave up his fiscal 2023 cash bonus and the executive team took a 70% cut to theirs, his letter to employees said, and the budget pool funding employee MBO bonuses was set at 50% for fiscal 2023's second, third and fourth quarters. That letter followed earlier 2023 steps that trimmed budgets, slowed hiring and consolidated office space, and it promised more office consolidation later that year; the fiscal 2023 annual report counts $3.5 million of lease-reduction charges in the same plan. F5 had paid $49.7 million of the plan's severance and payroll-tax costs in cash by the time its fiscal year closed that September, the same report says.

The letter for the 2025 cut is specific about who was affected. Addressed to Washington's Employment Security Department, F5's notice to the state names 801 5th Ave in Seattle and the company's Liberty Lake site and gives changes to its product strategy as the reason. Its title list runs from Engineer I to Sr Principal Engineer and takes in engineering managers, a product manager, user experience designers, a systems administrator and directors of business operations, product management and user experience design. The notice called those layoffs permanent and said they weren't the result of moving or contracting out the work. It also said that F5 wasn't unionized and that there was no collective bargaining agreement or bumping rights, which the letter describes as rights that let certain employees take the positions of others.

The reasons F5 has given have shifted. In April 2023 the chief executive pointed to interest rates and the economy. The November 2023 cut came after F5 reported 4% revenue growth for fiscal 2023, IANS noted, and was framed as realigning investments around its hybrid and multicloud strategy. The 2025 notice cited product strategy, after a quarter in which revenue rose 12% by SDxCentral's account.

The counts in F5's annual reports are company-wide, like the 9% of its global workforce cut in April 2023, and its restructuring line holds more than severance. The reports say the line carries severance, benefits and related costs plus the cost of shrinking leased offices, so the $7.4 million in F5's October 2026 earnings release for July through September 2026 doesn't translate into a number of jobs. In 2025 F5 also moved some people into new roles rather than only cutting them. A spokesperson told CRN, in remarks SDxCentral reported, that “selected roles were eliminated, while other employees were placed into new roles supporting strategic growth areas.”

If you're weighing an F5 package, the 2023 letter shows what F5 has included before, from bonus payouts to immigration help, a list you can bring into severance negotiations. If you were on the 2025 Washington list, F5's notice told you that you may be eligible for unemployment insurance, and Washington unemployment benefits has the weekly amounts and the steps to a claim.